jenvalentino

Hi. We don't know for sure how many targets are involved in these letters. However, the USA Freedom Act prohibited bulk collection of information here.

The government now releases basic statistics on NSLs, for example here: https://www.dni.gov/files/CLPT/documents/2019_ASTR_for_CY201....

In 2018, there were 10,235 NSLs, with 38,872 "requests for information" (ie targets) within those NSLs. So you can make some general inferences.

Hi. I'm the reporter on this story. Thanks for discussing it!

I thought it might be helpful for me to make a couple points.

First, national security letters have been around, AND controversial, for years now. A number of tech companies have fought the gag orders. The news here is really that we are seeing for the first time which other specific companies get a lot of these — especially banks, credit agencies and so forth, which have all been silent on the subject.

Second, @hammock is correct to say that these are not approved by a judge. Nor are they grand jury subpoenas. They are administrative subpoenas, but unlike other administrative subpoenas, almost all of these come with stringent, long-term gag orders. So, they're a pretty special type of subpoena, not one with which everyone is familiar.

Thanks again for reading.

Hi! I know this thread is a day old at this point, but I'm the reporter on this story and just wanted to say thanks for noticing that I put that in. I write a lot about privacy, online advertising and so forth, and I think it's important to readers that reporters at the NYT cover the same issues within our own business.

(Also, I acknowledge that perhaps you were being facetious and I just can't tell. But I still want to take this opportunity to point out the general principle.)