María Elvira Salazar: “another controversial provision of the PATRIOT Act is section 505, which authorizes the use of national security…”

“another controversial provision of the PATRIOT Act is section 505, which authorizes the use of national security letters. National security letters are requests for certain specific categories of information, including financial records, business dealings, and telephone and e-mail records. Under the conference report, NSLs can be issued without the prior approval of a judge and can be authorized by any of several dozen FBI field offices. The Washington Post recently reported that the Government now issues 30,000 NSLs a year--100 times more than historic norms. I respect and honor my friends and the leadership in the Federal Bureau of Investigation with whom I have worked for many years, but when we start issuing 30,000 NSLs a year, we ought to make sure there is some oversight with respect to how those NSLs are issued. As with section 215, the conference report does not allow meaningful judicial review of an NSL's gag order. Because the Government does not need a judge's approval to send an NSL, meaningful judicial review of a gag order is a critical safeguard and is simply missing in the conference report. I wish to finally spend just a second speaking about the sneak-and- peek searches under section 213. My colleagues and I expressed concern about the sneak-and-peek searches where the target of the search is not identified or notified for a period of several days or even weeks.…”