This is not America
It’s not elder law, either, but:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation may be using National Security Letters, which where introduced in the USA Patriot Act, to gain access to phone records of reporters for ABC News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
ABC News reports that the FBI has acknowledged that it was seeking reporters’ phone records to investigate leaks about secret prisons in Europe and warrantless wiretapping.
“It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration,” a senior federal official told ABC News “The Blotter” news blog.
ABC News explained that a National Security Letter (NSL) is “a version of an administrative subpoena and are not signed by a judge. Under the law, a phone company receiving a NSL for phone records must provide them and may not divulge to the customer that the records have been given to the government.”
On Monday, ABC News reporters Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, who write “The Blotter,” reported that a senior federal law enforcement official told ABC News that the FBI is tracking the phone numbers the two reporters call to reach confidential sources. The source told them in person that it was “time for you to get some new cell phones, quick.”
Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers. The official who warned ABC News said there was no indication our phones were being tapped so the content of the conversation could be recorded. A pattern of phone calls from a reporter, however, could provide valuable clues for leak investigators.
On Monday night, another federal source told Mr. Ross and Mr. Esposito that it was not that the FBI was “tracking” their calls. but that they were “backtracking.” The Associated Press reported early Monday that the FBI said it does not “routinely” track calls made by and to reporters, but that it does check phone records of government employees as part of leak investigations.