Republicans and Democrats in Congress called on Sunday for greater restrictions on the FBI's ability to demand business and personal records in terrorism investigations without a judge's approval and to retain the records indefinitely.
"We should not ever give up freedom on the basis of fear, and any freedom that we give up should be limited in time and limited in scope," Senator Tom Coburn, a member of the Judic-iary Committee, said on the NBC program Meet the Press.
Coburn and other senators were responding to an article on Sunday in the Washington Post about the government's increasing use of what are known as nat-ional security letters to demand records from businesses and institutions to aid in terrorism and intelligence investigations.
The FBI has long acknow-ledged that, with new authority granted to it under the anti-terrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, it has increasingly turned to national security letters as a way of collecting information on suspects. But it has refused demands from members of Congress to make data on the use of the letters publicly available and has provided figures only in limited form in classified settings.
The national security letters became particularly controversial in August after it was disclosed that the bureau had used one to demand internal records from a library association in Connecticut. The legal tool bars recipients from publicly disclosing that they have received such a demand.
The Post reported that the bureau was now issuing 30,000 national security letters a year, a sharp increase over pre-Sept. 11 rates. FBI officials declined on Sunday to say how many letters the bureau had issued but expressed some skepticism about the accuracy of the 30,000 figure.
Senator Joseph Biden said on This Week on ABC that "based on the fact there's 30,000 of these letters, which is a stunner to me, it appears to me that this is, if not abused, being close to abused."
Senator Charles Hagel said on This Week that he was worried about "the overreach of the Pat-riot Act," adding, "I have always been concerned about centraliz-ation of power and eroding individual rights."
Senator Edward Kennedy, who serves on the Judiciary Committee, said he was partic-ularly concerned about a change in policy that allows the bureau to retain and disseminate to other agencies information collected through the letters. Prior policy had required that the material be destroyed if it was not relevant to an investigation.
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