Respect My Lack of Authority--FBI

According to a CNN article, which is condensed below:

The FBI continued in 2006 to badly mishandle letters that it uses to obtain personal records without a court order, according to a Justice Department report released Thursday.

The new report shows the FBI continued in 2006 to increase its use of the secret letters. The 49,425 requests represented a 4.7 percent increase over 2005.

The new report cites "issuance of NSLs [national security letters] without proper authorization, improper requests and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records due to FBI errors or mistakes made by NSL recipients."

In an accompanying report the inspector general said the FBI made 47 requests to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for warrants to pursue business records. All requests were approved.

The report, however, singled out one classified case in which the FBI was turned down by the FISA court, and pursued the matter anyway. Although the details were blacked out in the report, the inspector general said Congress was provided a classified version of the report, which contains the information.