THE NSA AND THE FBI

We know that the FBI has misused national security letters and thanx to the WSJ, we learn that the FBI and the NSA have been teaming up to create a humongus database that most likely violates the 4th Amendment.

NSA's Domestic Spying Grows As Agency Sweeps Up Data
Terror Fight Blurs Line Over Domain; Tracking Email
By SIOBHAN GORMANMarch 10, 2008; Page A1

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans' privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the data-sifting effort didn't disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.

The NSA quietly redefined its role. Joint FBI-NSA projects "expanded exponentially," said Jack Cloonan, a longtime FBI veteran who investigated al Qaeda. He pointed to national-security letter requests: They rose from 8,500 in 2000 to 47,000 in 2005, according to a Justice Department inspector general's report last year. It also said the letters permitted the potentially illegal collection of thousands of records of people in the U.S. from 2003-05. Last Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the bureau had found additional instances in 2006.