Washington, DC – Today, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties approved legislation that would greatly reduce the scope of the National Security Letter (NSL) statute. NSLs are secret government requests for information that are used to collect private records without judicial oversight. The FBI’s gross misuse and abuse of the NSL statute has led to consecutive and embarrassing reports issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General. In March, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU also uncovered abuses of the NSL statute by the Department of Defense.

The following can be attributed to Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office:

“Time and time again, the FBI has shown it cannot police itself when it comes to the overly broad powers of the NSL. We applaud Representative Nadler and his subcommittee for moving this bill towards passage. Abuses of the NSL statute have been widely reported, but have yet to be addressed.

“If Congress doesn’t take action to rein in this power it will not only be sanctioning past abuses, but inviting further misuse. Today’s mark up of the National Security Letter Reform Act of 2007 is a big step in the right direction. Since a legislative fix is long overdue, we encourage the House to move this bill quickly to a vote.”

For more information about the ACLU's work on NSLs, go to:
www.aclu.org/nsl

# # #