Obama move reignites surveillance fears.

• Position: PRIVACY - Barack Obama

In a highly controversial move, the Obama administration has asked Congress to clarify the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) authority to obtain records related to electronic communications without first obtaining a warrant.

Specifically, the administration wants to know whether the FBI can ask communications providers for "electronic communication transactional records" without a warrant through national security letters (NSLs), which are secret and do not require a judge's signature. These records include the times, dates, and addresses to which e-mails were sent and possibly web-browsing records, according to The Washington Post. Government lawyers said that the records would not include the content of e-mail or other electronic communications.

The clarification administration officials are asking for comes in the form of a provision in the 2011 intelligence authorization bill that modifies the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which does not allow firms that handle electronic communications, such as Google or Microsoft, to reveal customer information without a court order, The New York Times reported.

As it stands now, a 1993 update to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act allows the FBI to collect only four categories of information without a court order: name, address, length of service, and toll billing records. The Obama administration wants to add electronic communication transactional records to that list.

But what the administration views as an attempt to clear up the issue has stirred up old fears about government surveillance that reached a boiling point during the Bush administration. According to The Times, that administration used NSLs after 9/11 to demand citizens' sensitive information, including lists of library books they had checked out and their financial records, unbeknownst to the individuals, as part of its warrantless surveillance program. Internal investigations have since found widespread misuse of the power and little oversight...