This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, May 16, 2011. I'm Caleb Brown.

When your rights are violated, you should be able to tell a court that your rights have been violated, that you want the violation

recognized, and that you want your rights restored.

When the FBI hands you a national security letter requesting specific information from you without a warrant, you aren't allowed to tell

anyone or you risk jail.

Julian Sanchez is author of the new Cato report Leashing the Surveillance State,

How to Reform Patriot Act surveillance authorities.

In 2007, Senator Barack Obama seems to have regarded national security letters as an abomination.

These incredibly powerful demands for sensitive telecommunications

and financial records are issued by the heads of FBI field offices without a need for judicial

approval and the people whose records are seized typically

never find out about it.

Then he said in no uncertain terms that there should be no more national security

letters used to spy on Americans who are not even suspected of any wrongdoing.

Unfortunately, the administration of President Obama has overseen spectacular growth in the use of national security letters.

And in 2010, they were used to obtain the records of an unprecedented number of Americans, most of whom were not suspected of any wrongdoing.

So between 2009 and 2010, according to the most recent report from the Justice Department,

the number of National Security

Letter requests issued that affected Americans rose from just under 15,000 to

more than 24,000. And the most spectacular jump here is in the number of U.S. persons who were affected.

It rose from 6,114 to a stunning 14,212, the previous record for Americans whose records were seized in one year was set

by President Bush in 2005.

...