Eric Lichtblau of the NY Times:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 — The F.B.I. cast a much wider net in its terrorism investigations than it has previously acknowledged by relying on telecommunications companies to analyze phone-call and e-mail patterns of the associates of Americans who had come under suspicion, according to newly obtained bureau records.

The documents indicate that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used secret demands for records to obtain data not only on individuals it saw as targets but also details on their “community of interest” — the network of people that the target in turn was in contact with. The bureau recently stopped the practice in part because of broader questions raised about its aggressive use of the records demands, which are known as national security letters, officials said Friday after being asked about it.

So if you talked to someone under suspicion, there’s a good chance you were wiretapped, too. Which must be legal, right?

Well, not exactly:

The requests for such data showed up a dozen times, using nearly identical language, in records from one six-month period in 2005 obtained by a nonprofit advocacy group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it brought against the government. The F.B.I. recently turned over 2,500 pages of documents to the group. The boilerplate language suggests the requests may have been used in many of more than 700 emergency or “exigent” national security letters. Earlier this year, the bureau banned the use of the exigent letters because they had never been authorized by law.

Okay, so they were illegal, those national security letters. But at least they were pursuing dangerous terror suspects. Think again.

A federal judge in Manhattan last week struck down parts of the USA Patriot Act that had authorized the F.B.I.’s use of the national security letters, saying that some provisions violated the First Amendment and the constitutional separation of powers guarantee. In many cases, the target of a national security letter whose records are being sought is not necessarily the actual subject of a terrorism investigation and may not be suspected at all. Under the Patriot Act, the F.B.I. must assert only that the records gathered through the letter are considered relevant to a terrorism investigation.

Some legal analysts and privacy advocates suggested that the disclosure of the F.B.I.’s collection of community of interest records — extending the link even further beyond an actual suspect in a terrorism investigation — offered another example of the bureau exceeding the substantial powers already granted it by Congress.

“This whole concept of tracking someone’s community of interest is not part of any established F.B.I. authority,” said Marcia Hofmann, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which provided the records from its lawsuit to The New York Times. “It’s being defined by the F.B.I. And when it’s left up to the F.B.I. to decide what information is relevant to their investigations, they can vacuum up almost anything they want.”

So someone who’s not a suspect can be investigated by use of a letter that’s not legally authorized, and everyone who phones or emails the non-suspect being spied on can also be spied on secretly.

No evidence has yet to be presented that this illegal wide net has aided the tracking or apprehension of an actual terrorist. But there’s lots of proof that entirely innocent citizens are being illegally recorded. And your phone company may have also been illegally turning over private information on you.

As Osama Bin Laden is free to be making videos, you are being watched by your government for nothing.

The terrorists never stole our freedom. It was the Potomac purse-snatchers who did that. And it’s time all of them were brought to justice.

We do believe in the fight for justice, still. Right?

Hello? Anyone… ?