	Introduction

National Security Letters (NSLs) are roughly comparable to administrative subpoenas. Intelligence agencies issue them for intelligence gathering purposes to telephone companies, Internet service providers, consumer credit reporting agencies, banks, and other financial institutions, directing the recipients to turn over certain customer records and similar information. S. 193 would also have extended three USA PATRIOT Act-related amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) then scheduled to expire earlier this year. The Senate Judiciary Committee reported out an amended version of S. 193 on April 6, 2011. Thereafter, Congress extended the FISA amendments separately. Senator Leahy then reintroduced the reported version of S. 193 as S. 1125 , stripped of the FISA extension provisions. Representative Conyers introduced companion legislation in the House ( H.R. 1805 ). Senator Paul offered several bills that address many of the same issues ( S. 1050 , S. 1070 , S. 1073 , S. 1075 ). 1681v); return the others, as of December 31, 2013, to their pre-USA PATRIOT Act form; amend the judicial review procedure to reflect judicial constructions; and adjust the audit and reporting requirements. Background

Prior to the USA PATRIOT Act, the NSL statutes were four. USA PATRIOT Act

Section 505 of the USA PATRIOT Act altered the FBI's NSL authority under Section 2709, the Right to Financial Privacy Act, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act in several ways:
it expanded issuing authority to include the heads of FBI field offices (special agents in charge (SACs)); it eliminated the requirement of specific and articulable facts demonstrating a nexus to a foreign power or its agents; it required instead that the information was sought for or relevant to various national security investigations; and it directed that no NSL related investigation of a "U.S. person" (American citizen or foreign resident alien) be predicated exclusively on First Amendment protected activities. More specifically, the report found that:
a "significant number of NSL-related possible violations were not being identified or reported" as required; the only FBI data collection system produced "inaccurate" results; the FBI issued over 700 exigent letters acquiring information in a manner that "circumvented the ECPA NSL statute and violated the Attorney General's Guidelines ... and internal FBI policy;" the FBI's Counterterrorism Division initiated over 300 NSLs in a manner that precluded effective review prior to approval; 60% of the individual files examined showed violations of FBI internal control policies; the FBI did not retain signed copies of the NSLs it issued; the FBI had not provided clear guidance on the application of the Attorney General's least-intrusive-feasible-investigative-technique standard in the case of NSLs; the precise interpretation of toll billing information as it appears in the ECPA NSL statute is unclear; SAC supervision of the attorneys responsible for review of the legal adequacy of proposed NSLs made some of the attorneys reluctant to question the adequacy of the underlying investigation previously approved by the SAC; there was no indication that the FBI's misuse of NSL authority constituted criminal conduct; personnel both at FBI headquarters and in the field considered NSL use indispensable; and information generated by NSLs was fed into a number of FBI systems. Failure to comply with the court's order thereafter is punishable as contempt of court. Proposed Amendments

		Sunset and Repeal

Three provisions governing foreign intelligence investigations sunset on June 1, 2015. S. 1125 and H.R. Prior to the USA PATRIOT Act, the NSL statutes strictly prohibited recipients from disclosing the request to anyone, ever. Nondisclosure

Each of the NSL statutes has a nondisclosure provision. For example, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) provides fairly rigorous statutory procedures that must be honored before electronic surveillance or physical searches may be authorized in a national security context. 1805 would expand each of these requirements.
National Security Letters (NSLs) are roughly comparable to administrative subpoenas. Various intelligence agencies use them to demand certain customer information from communications providers, financial institutions, and consumer credit reporting agencies under the Right to Financial Privacy Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the National Security Act, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
The USA PATRIOT Act expanded NSL authority. Later reports of the Department of Justice's Inspector General indicated that (1) the FBI considered the expanded authority very useful; (2) after expansion the number of NSL requests increased dramatically; (3) the number of requests relating to Americans increased substantially; and (4) FBI use of NSL authority had sometimes failed to comply with statutory, Attorney General, or FBI policies.
Originally, the NSL statutes authorized nondisclosure requirements prohibiting recipients from disclosing receipt or the content of an NSL to anyone, ever. They now permit judicial review of these secrecy provisions. As understood by the courts, recipients may request the issuing agency to seek and justify to the court the continued binding effect of any secrecy requirement.
In conjunction with congressional consideration of three expiring USA PATRIOT Act-related amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the Senate Judiciary Committee recommended that the NSL statutes be returned to their USA PATRIOT Act form and that judicial construction of the nondisclosure provisions be codified, S.Rept. 112-13 to accompany S. 193. Thereafter, Congress extended the FISA provisions in separate legislation, P.L. 112-14 (S. 990). Senator Leahy (S. 1125) and Representative Conyers (H.R. 1805) have reintroduced the NSL proposals found in S. 193. Senator Paul has offered several proposals to require FISA court approval before an NSL could be executed as well as to require NSL minimization standards (S. 1050, S. 1070, S. 1073, and S. 1075).
This report reprints the text of the five NSL statutes as they now appear and as they appeared prior to amendment by the USA PATRIOT Act (to which form they would be returned under S. 1125 and H.R. 1805). Related reports include CRS Report R40138, Amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Extended Until June 1, 2015, by [author name scrubbed], and CRS Report RL33320, National Security Letters in Foreign Intelligence Investigations: Legal Background and Recent Amendments, by [author name scrubbed].