Not really old news. But if you hadn't noticed...

And there's no reason why you would have noticed because this sort of shit doesn't go public often enough. The FBI is under investigation for, well... investigations they've made. They've been going a little crazy with the rights granted by the Patriotic Act. I'm going to go ahead and make the decision that none of this should surprise you anymore, by the way. 2007 must be the Chinese 'Year of the Scandal,' so here another courtesy of Time.com:

In 2000, 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. In 2005, 53 percent were for records of U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

In a sampling of 77 case files in four FBI field offices, Fine discovered an additional 8,850 requests that were never recorded in the FBI's database, and he estimated there were many more nationwide.
The 48 possible violations Fine uncovered included failing to get proper authorization, making improper requests under the law and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records.

You can read the rest of the article here:

The FBI's Been Bad, Bad, Bad.