But read on. The FBI program that uses the letters is a "Friendster for Fascists," which is the part of the story that's getting buried. AP:

The nation's top two law enforcement officials acknowledged Friday the FBI broke the law to secretly pry out personal information about Americans. They apologized and vowed to prevent further illegal intrusions.

Krugman was right. Two words: subpoena power. Can anyone imagine these guys apologizing for anything--or the illegality even coming to light--if the Congress were still in Republican hands?

Gonzales left open the possibility of pursuing criminal charges against FBI agents or lawyers who improperly used the USA Patriot Act in pursuit of suspected terrorists and spies.

I say, be bold! Prosecute the "bad apples"!

And now an early candidate for Understatement of the Year:

"We have some work to do to reassure members of Congress and the American people that we are serious about being responsible in the exercise of these authorities," he said.

Indeed. The numbers look really bad.

In 2000, for example, the FBI issued an estimated 8,500 requests. That number peaked in 2004 with 56,000. Overall, the FBI reported issuing 143,074 requests in national security letters between 2003 and 2005.

But that did not include an additional 8,850 requests that were never recorded in the FBI's database, the audit found. A sample review of 77 case files at four FBI field offices showed that agents had underreported the number of national security letter requests by about 22 percent.

And now, from a Corrente post w-a-a-a-y back in 2005, here are some things that the AP story does not mention about the information that the FBI has been gathering.

1. These records are private records; for example, financial records of ordinary Americans who had "casual or unwitting contact" with a suspect.

2. The record-keeping is not reviewed after the fact for accuracy.

3. The records are widely shared among Federal agencies, the states, localities, and "appropriate private sector entities." (Wackenhut? The RNC?)

4. The records are never discarded.

5. The records are gathered using a technique called "contact chaining," meaning that if Alice is a suspect and knows Bob, then Bob is surveilled, and if Bob knows Carol, Carla, and Charles, they are surveilled. And since everyone in the world can be connected via "six degrees of separation," that means that the number of people surveilled under this program will grow exponentially if left unchecked.

The program, for which the National Security letters are just a tool, really is a Friendster for Fascists.

It would be nice to see this aspect of the program covered by our famously free press.

NOTE I assume that Gonzo's taking the modified limited hangout route here, and will try to get away with disciplining the "bad apples," while trying to distract us from the real story, which is the program that used the data gathered from the letters.

UPDATE Glenn Greenwald has a superb article up, that notes, among much else, that Bush put out a signing statement when the Patriot Act was renewed that said he'd ignore the SNL provisions.