The Case of the Purloined Letters

Well, I'm shocked, shocked I tell you! As it turns out, when you give law enforcement agents the power to conduct secret and unreviewable searches and seizures, they just go on and abuse it. From today's Washington Post:

A Justice Department investigation has found pervasive errors in the FBI's use of its power to secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records in national security cases, officials with access to the report said yesterday.

The inspector general's audit, mandated by Congress over Bush administration objections, found that 22 of the errors were possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations — some of which were potential violations of law — in a sampling of 293 "national security letters." The letters were used by the FBI to obtain the personal records of U.S. residents or visitors between 2003 and 2005. The FBI identified 26 potential violations in other cases.

That's a total of 48 "mistakes" out of the 293 cases they looked at. But how many national security letters are issued each year? About 19,000. I guess the founders knew what they were doing after all when they wrote the 4th Amendment.