Five statutory provisions vest government agencies responsible for certain foreign intelligence investigations (principally the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)) with authority to issue written commands comparable to administrative subpoenas. A National Security Letter (NSL) seeks customer and consumer transaction information in national security investigations from communications providers, financial institutions, and credit agencies. Over the years, Congress has struggled with efforts to ensure the effectiveness of the NSL authority, while guarding against its abuse. NSL authority began with dissatisfaction with the exception to the privacy provisions of the Right to Financial Privacy Act (RFPA). Congress initially acted, without a great deal of analysis on the record, to be sure the exception was not too broadly construed. But the exception was just that, an exception. It was neither an affirmative grant of authority to request information nor a command to financial institutions to provided information when asked. It removed the restrictions on the release of customer information imposed on financial institutions by the Right to Financial Privacy Act, but it left them free to decline to comply when asked to do so. [I]n certain significant instances, financial institutions [had] declined to grant the FBI access to financial records in response to requests under [S]ection 1114(a). The FBI informed the Committee that the problem occurs particularly in States which have State constitutional privacy protection provisions or State banking privacy laws. In those States, financial institutions decline to grant the FBI access because State law prohibits them from granting such access and the RFPA, since it permits but does not mandate such access, does not override State law. In such a situation, the concerned financial institutions which might otherwise desire to grant the FBI access to a customer's record will not do so, because State law does not allow such cooperation, and cooperation might expose them to liability to the customer whose records the FBI sought access. Congress responded with passage of the first NSL statute as an amendment to the Right to Financial Privacy Act, affirmatively giving the FBI access to financial institution records in certain foreign intelligence cases. At the same time in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, it afforded the FBI comparable access to the telephone company and other communications service provider customer information. Together the two NSL provisions afforded the FBI access to communications and financial business records under limited circumstances—customer and customer transaction information held by telephone carriers and banks pertaining to a foreign power or its agents relevant to a foreign counter-intelligence investigation. Both the communications provider section and the Right to Financial Privacy Act section contained nondisclosure provisions and limitations on further dissemination except pursuant of guidelines promulgated by the Attorney General. Neither had an express enforcement mechanism nor identified penalties for failure to comply with either the NSL or the nondisclosure instruction. In the mid-1990s, Congress added two more NSL provisions—one permits NSL use in connection with the investigation of government employee leaks of classified information under the National Security Act; and the other grants the FBI access to credit agency records pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, under much the same conditions as apply to the records of financial institutions. The FBI asked for the Fair Credit Reporting Act amendment as a threshold mechanism to enable it to make more effective use of its bank record access authority: FBI's right of access under the Right of Financial Privacy Act cannot be effectively used, however, until the FBI discovers which financial institutions are being utilized by the subject of a counterintelligence investigation. Consumer reports maintained by credit bureaus are a ready source of such information, but, although such report[s] are readily available to the private sector, they are not available to FBI counterintelligence investigators.... FBI has made a specific showing ... that the effort to identify financial institutions in order to make use of FBI authority under the Right to Financial Privacy Act can not only be time-consuming and resource-intensive, but can also require the use of investigative techniques—such as physical and electronic surveillance, review of mail covers, and canvassing of all banks in an area—that would appear to be more intrusive than the review of credit reports. H.Rept. 104-427 , at 36 (1996). The National Security Act NSL provision authorized access to credit and financial institution records of federal employees with security clearances who were required to give their consent as a condition for clearance. Passed in the wake of the Ames espionage case, it is limited to investigations of classified information leaks. As noted at the time, "The Committee believes section 801 will serve as a deterrent to espionage for financial gain without burdening investigative agencies with unproductive recordkeeping or subjecting employees to new reporting requirements.... The Committee recognizes that consumer credit records have been notoriously inaccurate, and expects that information obtained pursuant to this [S]ection alone will not be the basis of an action or decision adverse to the interest of the employee involved." Both the Fair Credit Reporting Act section and the National Security Act section contain dissemination restrictions; as well as safe harbor (immunity), and nondisclosure provisions. Neither has an explicit penalty for improper disclosure of the request, but the Fair Credit Reporting Act section expressly authorizes judicial enforcement. The USA PATRIOT Act amended three of the four existing NSL statutes and added a fifth. In each of the three NSL statutes available exclusively to the FBI—the Electronic Communications Privacy Act section (18 U.S.C. 2709), the Right to Financial Privacy Act section (12 U.S.C. 3414(a)(5)), and the Fair Credit Reporting Act section (15 U.S.C. 1681u) (§505 of the USA PATRIOT Act) expanded FBI issuing authority beyond FBI headquarter officials to include the heads of the FBI field offices (i.e., Special Agents in Charge (SAC)); eliminated the requirement that the record information sought pertain to a foreign power or the agent of a foreign power; required instead that the NSL request be relevant to an investigation to protect against international terrorism or foreign spying; added the caveat that no such investigation of an American can be predicated exclusively of First Amendment protected activities. The amendments allowed NSL authority to be employed more quickly (without the delays associated with prior approval from FBI headquarters) and more widely (without requiring that the information pertain to a foreign power or its agents). Subsection 358(g) of the USA PATRIOT Act amended the Fair Credit Reporting Act to add a fifth and final NSL section; the provision had one particularly noteworthy feature, it was available not merely to the FBI but to any government agency investigating or analyzing international terrorism: Notwithstanding [S]ection 1681b of this title or any other provision of this subchapter, a consumer reporting agency shall furnish a consumer report of a consumer and all other information in a consumer's file to a government agency authorized to conduct investigations of, or intelligence or counterintelligence activities or analysis related to, international terrorism when presented with a written certification by such government agency that such information is necessary for the agency's conduct or such investigation, activity or analysis. Although the subsection's legislative history treats it as a matter of first impression, Congress's obvious intent was to provide other agencies with the national security letter authority comparable to that enjoyed by the FBI under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The new section had a nondisclosure and a safe harbor subsection, but no express means of judicial enforcement or penalties for improper disclosure of a request under the section. Two court decisions colored the debate over NSL authority, which culminated in enactment of the 2006 USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization statutes. Doe v. Gonzales suggested that the NSL statutes could not withstand constitutional scrutiny under the First Amendment unless more explicit accommodations were made for judicial review and permissible disclosure by recipients. Doe v. Ashcroft had earlier reached much the same conclusion on the First Amendment and raised Fourth Amendment issues as well. In essence, Doe v. Ashcroft found that the language of communications NSL statute and the practices surrounding its use offended (1) the Fourth Amendment because "in all but the exceptional case it [had] the effect of authorizing coercive searches effectively immune from any judicial process," and (2) the First Amendment because its sweeping, permanent secrecy order feature applied "in every case, to every person, in perpetuity, with no vehicle for the ban to ever be lifted from the recipient or other persons affected under any circumstances, either by the FBI itself, or pursuant to judicial process." Both USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization statutes amended the NSL statutes. Their amendments: created a judicial enforcement mechanism and a judicial review procedure for both the requests and accompanying nondisclosure requirements; established specific penalties for failure to comply or to observe the nondisclosure requirements; made it clear that the nondisclosure requirements did not preclude a recipient from consulting an attorney; provided a process to ease the nondisclosure requirement; expanded congressional oversight; called for an Inspector General's audit of use of the authority. The statutorily directed Department of Justice Inspector General audit reports, one released in March of 2007, the second in March of 2008, and the third in January of 2010, were less than totally favorable. The first report noted that FBI use of NSLs had increased dramatically, expanding from 8,500 requests in 2000 to 47,000 in 2005, IG Report I at 120. During the three years under review, the percentage of NSLs used to investigate Americans ("U.S. persons") increased from 39% in 2003 to 53% in 2005. A substantial majority of the requests involved records relating to telephone or e-mail communications, id. The report and the subsequent report a year later provided a glimpse at how the individual NSL statutes were used and why they were considered available. In case of the 18 U.S.C. 2709, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) NSL statute, the reports explained that Through national security letters, an FBI field office obtained telephone toll billing records and subscriber information about an investigative subject in a counterterrorism case. The information obtained identified the various telephone numbers with which the subject had frequent contact.