Newly released documents from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) show warrantless surveillance of Americans’ electronic communications by federal law enforcement agencies through pen register and trap devices sharply increased. Notably, because of how easy it is for government to intercept communications, government now regularly exercises the authority to intercept “to” and “from” addresses of email messages, collect instant message conversation records and gather what the ACLU refers to as “non-content data associated with social networking identities.”

Main Justice reports that Pat Leahy and DOJ’s Inspector General Glenn Fine have been chatting about further IG review of the FBI’s use of the several PATRIOT provisions that were contentious issues in last years attempt to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act. This means that Fine is going to do what the legislation would have mandated — conduct further reviews of these authorities — on his own. But I’m also interested in the scope Fine lays out for his review in his response to Leahy.