Fishing for data.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Since the USA Patriot Act became became law four years ago, the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation have steadfastly refused to make public information on how its far-reaching powers have been used to collect sensitive information on American citizens.

A story in Sunday's Washington Post helps explain that reticence.

Quoting unnamed government sources, the Post reported the FBI has aggressively used the national security letter provision of the Patriot Act to retrieve the private phone, financial and other records of ordinary Americans.

How aggressively? The Post says the FBI has issued more than 30,000 security letters each year - a hundred-fold increase over the historic norm.

Some background provides perspective: Security letters were created in the 1970s for use in espionage and terrorism investigations. Originally they were narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law intended to enable the FBI to gain clandestine access to customer records of suspected foreign agents. Under the Patriot Act, however, the letters have been used to secretly amass mountains of data on U.S. citizens and visitors who have no linkage to terrorism or espionage.

The letters are issued not by judges, grand juries or even prosecutors, but by FBI field agents. They enable investigators to collect intimate records free of any semblance of external checks and balances.

As for public accountability, forget about it. Neither Congress nor the Justice Department reviews letters for potential abuses.

The federal government should not be allowed to snoop arbitrarily and without limits in the lives of people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. National security letters may have once been a legitimate tool for pursuing leads in legitimate investigations, but they should not be used to generate leads where none previously existed.

Security letters cast far too wide a net. Even a single letter can indirectly provide federal agents with access to the private records of hundreds of people. A single unwitting phone call or e-mail contact with a targeted individual can provoke intense scrutiny by investigators - scrutiny that may never come to light.

The Post's revelations are even more disturbing in light of the Bush administration's recent creation of massive data banks that include information produced through national security letters. As a result of an executive order signed last month by President Bush, access to those records is also being made available to state and local governments, as well as to ominously unspecified "appropriate private sector entities."

There is still time to revise the Patriot Act to address these and other concerns. In creating the law four years ago, Congress wisely placed an expiration date on 16 provisions. Ironically, the changes involving national security letters weren't among them, and bills approved earlier this year by both the House and Senate would strengthen, not limit, the FBI's authority to secretly obtain private records.

However, some Republicans and Democrats want to revisit the issue of security letters. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., both members of the Judiciary Committee, support changing the Patriot Act to specify that any information gathered on innocent citizens should be destroyed if it does not lead to criminal charges.

Portions of the Patriot Act have proven useful, effective and non-controversial tools in the fight against terrorism. But a disturbing number of its provisions trample on fundamental rights of Americans. The conference committee considering revisions to the law should make certain its final product restores those rights.