Documents: FBI demands info from companies

WASHINGTON» The FBI has sent secretive written demands for information to more than 120 companies in recent years — including telecommunications providers, technology firms and credit agencies — according to documents released Friday, raising new questions about the government’s ability to quietly gather data on people.

The demands, called national security letters or NSLS, are issued without court oversight and typically are accompanied by gag orders on the companies. The people whose data is being requested rarely know of the NSLS or have the opportunity to contest their demands in court.

The new documents, released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, underscore ongoing questions about the effectiveness of a 2015 law designed, in part, to bring some transparency to the issuing and enforcing of NSLS.

Atop the list of companies that the documents show received NSLS are credit agencies Equifax, Experian and Transunion; telecommunications providers AT&T, T-mobile and Verizon; financial services companies Bank of America, Western Union and Capital One; and technology companies Google, Microsoft and Facebook. Some received dozens, others just a few.

None of the companies commented Friday on the disclosures aside from saying that they comply with the requirements of NSLS, as mandated by law. The law specifically permits the FBI to issue NSLS to companies in these industries. The New York Times first reported on the publication of the new documents by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on Friday.

Some of the technology companies have been public about their receipt of NSLS and in some cases have published redacted versions of the letters to raise awareness of the practice, released tabulations of their numbers in regular reports or fought the gag orders in court.

Companies in other industries, such as telecommunications and banking, typically have complied quietly with the demands for information, which government officials have said are crucial to pursuing investigations into terrorism or intelligence matters.

Hundreds of thousands of NSLS have been issued since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the East Coast, which prompted an expansion in the government’s collection of evidence from records kept by private companies.

“They’re sending these out faster than they are removing them,” said Andrew Crocker, senior staff attorney for the EFF, based in San Francisco. “So that’s a recipe for increasing the amount of secrecy, not decreasing it.”