FOIA Request Reveals National Security Letter Templates

The Wall Street Journal and Ars Technica report on some very intersting results of a FOIA request for information on the "national security letters" that the FBI sends to tech companies to get information on users. These letters have provoked controversy, at least among civil liberties groups, both for their volume---the FBI issued nearly 25,000 such letters in 2011 alone---and because they do not require the government to go before a judge or grand jury. Although the DOJ did not release actual letters, it did disclose templates (see here for an example). Many of the letters are quite broad, requesting "internet activity logs" and "financial records." Although some of the templates include detailed lists of documents and records that would satisfy the request, those lists are unfortunately redacted, meaning that we still don't know exactly what types of records companies and organizations are sending back to the FBI. In addition, the templates outline procedures for challenging either the requests themselves or the non-disclosure provisions that often, though no longer automatically, accompany them. As Wired noted last month, however, very few companies have challenged the non-disclosure provisions.