In a loosening of rules surrounding national security letters, the FBI generally will let companies reveal warrantless requests they receive for customer data the agency seeks as part of national security cases, President Barack Obama’s administration announced Tuesday.
Under the national security letter program, the FBI can bypass a judge to get subscriber information, telephone records and other customer details from businesses. Until now, companies typically couldn’t publicly disclose information about the national security letters they received—even the fact that they’d received one.
