FBI obtained "several million" customer records
Alarming information about US domestic surveillance from the New York Times: the FBI obtained records about several million customers from scuba diving shops and schools, issuing a subpoena to the one store that refused to supply the information. The rest of the article extrapolates from other recent issues like the FISA decision, the Total Information Awareness program, and the ACLU’s attempts at obtaining statistics on Patriot Act surveillance.
Hundreds of dive shops and organizations gladly turned over their records, giving agents contact information for several million people.[...]
But just as the effort was wrapping up in July, the F.B.I. ran into a two-man revolt. The owners of the Reef Seekers Dive Company in Beverly Hills, Calif., balked at turning over the records of their clients, who include Tom Cruise and Tommy Lee Jones — even when officials came back with a subpoena asking for “any and all documents and other records relating to all noncertified divers and referrals from July 1, 1999, through July 16, 2002.”
Faced with defending the request before a judge, the prosecutor handling the matter notified Reef Seekers’ lawyer that he was withdrawing the subpoena. The company’s records stayed put.
[...]
Just how far the F.B.I. has gone is not clear. The Justice Department told a House panel in June that it had used its new antiterrorism powers in 40 instances to share terror information from grand jury investigations with other government authorities. It said it had twice handed over terror leads from wiretaps.
But that was as far as Justice officials were willing to go, declining to answer publicly most of the committee’s questions about terror-related inquiries. Civil libertarians have sued under the Freedom of Information Act to get the withheld information, including how often prosecutors have used Section 215 of the 2001 antiterror law to require bookstores or librarians to turn over patron records.
The secrecy enshrouding the counterterrorism campaign runs so deep that Section 215 makes it a crime for people merely to divulge whether the F.B.I. has demanded their records, deepening the mystery — and the uneasiness among groups that could be required to turn over information they had considered private.
– NY Times, New Tools for Domestic Spying, and Qualms.