In September 2007, a federal court struck down the entirety of the National Security Letter (NSL) provisions of the Patriot Act. Judge Victor Marrero of the Southern District of New York ruled NSLs violate the First Amendment and directly abuse the constitutional separation of powers.

The National Security Letter provision of the Patriot Act radically expanded the FBI's authority to demand personal records like Web site visits and e-mail addresses without prior court approval. The provision also allows the FBI to forbid or "gag" anyone who receives an NSL from telling anyone about the record demand.

The NSL statute had "permitted" the FBI to issue secret demands for personal records without court approval. It also empowers the government to gag recipients from even discussing these NSLs.

Those secret demands meant that the FBI could deliver a letter (called an NSL) to any entity such as an employer, a library, an internet provider, or a telephone company. Remember, with the warrantless spying that Bush has implemented, the FBI also did not have to have a court warrant in order to deliver such a letter or to pry into an individual's private life.

In this letter, the FBI then demands that all records regarding an individual be turned over to the FBI - and, this is the worst part, that the entity (phone company, employer, etc.) could not tell anyone that the FBI made these requests. They could not tell the individual, the press, the court - not anyone. This is referred to as an NSL gag order.

Since the Patriot Act was authorized in 2001, further relaxing restrictions on the FBI's use of the power, the number of NSLs issued has seen an astronomical increase.

Reports previously indicated a hundred-fold increase to 30,000 NSLs issued annually, but a March 2007 report from the Justice Department's Inspector General puts the actual number at over 143,000 NSLs issued between 2003 and 2005:

143,074 = The number of requests for information from 2003 - 2005. Approximately half concerned U.S. persons.

0 = The amount of information obtained by use of NSLs that the law currently requires to be destroyed - even after the information is determined to concern innocent Americans.

3,000 = The number of different telephone numbers that the FBI requested information on, and telecommunications companies turned over, in false emergencies under so-called "exigent" circumstances, in the complete absence of any legal authority.

34,000 = The number of law enforcement and intelligence agents who have unfettered, virtually limitless access to phone records collected through NSLs.

11,100 = The number of different phone numbers whose subscriber information was turned over to the FBI in response to only nine NSLs.

43 = The number of confirmed criminal referrals made to prosecutors from the FBI after it obtained information through a NSL. (19 involved fraud, 17 were immigration-related and 17 were for money laundering.)

1 = The number of terror-related convictions the Inspector General was able to confirm (material support) stemming from the 143,074 persons' info that was collected through NSLs.

It's really unbelievable. That's over 140,000 Americans who have had their private records and lives examined by the FBI - without a warrant, without court oversight, without due process, without representation of an attorney - and without even knowing about it.

Latest numbers confirm that a majority of NSLs seek information about U.S. persons, not foreigners. The majority are U.S. citizen.

22 percent of files examined by the Inspector General contained unreported violations by the FBI - violations committed by FBI agents and unreported by their superiors at the FBI. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound?

We have to make sure that the courts become involved - and stay involved - in all of Bush's surveillance. Otherwise, it is most certainly like the trees falling in the woods with no one there to hear them.

The same Inspector General investigation also found serious FBI abuses of regulations and numerous potential violations of the law.

Not only did District Court Judge Victor Marrero rule that this gag power violates the First Amendment and the fundamental separation of powers, he also found that, because the gag provisions could not be separated from the entire amended statute, the Patriot NSL statute must be struck down in its entirety.

Meanwhile, citizens still need answers regarding the FBI's involvement in spying on U.S. citizens:

• Who has access to the information of innocent Americans' after it is entered into the databases identified by the Inspector General? What are the limits to how information may be used?
• Why is the FBI issuing so-called "exigent letters" that immediately request phone call information - when there is no emergency - without any statutory authority to do so?
• How much were the three telecommunications companies paid for their "contract" with the government to turn over phone records absent a lawful request to do so?
• Why is the government issuing National Security Letters (NSLs) to conduct fishing expeditions - or as the IG put it, to "access NSL information about parties two or three steps removed from their subjects without determining if these contacts reveal suspicious connections?"
• How much time and resources were wasted on collecting information on innocent people that could have spent on proven, lawful intelligence activities, particularly in light of the lone terrorism prosecution that resulted?
• Was secrecy truly warranted with respect to all 140,000 demands issued by the FBI, or was the FBI using the gag provisions as a means of concealing abuse and protecting the agency from public oversight?
• Who is going to be held responsible for the wholesale violation of American privacy laws?
• Can we create ironclad laws that keep presidents from interfering with the freedoms and privacy of U.S. citizens? How will we prevent future presidents from being able to violate the constitution?

This recent court decision regarding the FBI and its NSLs is a small victory in that it only keeps the FBI from issuing letters with gag orders.

However, it does nothing to slow down the National Security Administration (NSA). The NSA, the main spying arm of the Bush administration, still has extremely broad spying powers recently given to it by Congress. For more information about the NSA spying on Americans:

• No accountability for spying on American citizens
• The changing definition of electronic surveillance
• Will we allow Congress to sacrifice our rights?

Spying on innocent Americans is still in full operation and only new legislation in Congress will stop it.

In light of how the FBI exceeded their authority to collect vast amounts of data on innocent American citizens, why shouldn't Congress limit their use to solely investigating suspected terrorists? Why have the FBI and NSA been spying on Americans? Without court oversight, how do we know that the much more powerful NSA hasn't been widely trampling on our rights in even a greater way than the FBI has?

How do we know?

We have so much to do - to regain the balance of powers in government - and, to safeguard the rights provided to all citizens in our U.S. Constitution.