Wall Street Journal, 21 March 1996 New FBI Access To Credit Files Raises Concern By Vanessa O'Connell Consumer-rights advocates are sounding alarms about a new law giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation easier access to credit-report information. The little-noticed law enacted in January as part of the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1996, allows FBI officials to obtain key information from a person's credit file without seeking a judge's permission. Investigators still need a court order or a federal grand jury subpoena to view someone's full credit report. But they can get basic information with only written authorization from the head of the FBI or his designee if there's reason to suspect a person is a spy or terrorist or has had contact with one. The basic information available under the new law includes a person's employment history, addresses, and a list of lenders and other financial institutions with which the person has or had relationships. To avoid tipping off suspects to an investigation, the new law also requires credit bureaus to keep secret any FBI request to review a credit report. Privacy and civil-rights experts say the law raises numerous privacy concerns and leaves individuals vulnerable. "The court-order warrant procedure is a major protection of individual rights and it ought not be suspended," said Alan F. Westin, professor of public law and government at Columbia University. Gregory Nojeim, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, complained that "all the FBI would have to do is make a secret letter request to a credit bureau based on secret FBI determinations." "It's appalling," said David Banisar, a policy analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington nonprofit public-interest group promoting better privacy laws. In the past, the FBI sometimes pulled credit reports in criminal cases, but rarely looked at the credit files of individuals it was secretly investigating as suspected spies or terrorists. Before the new law, an FBI request for credit information had to be listed in an individual's file along with the names of lenders or potential employers that asked to review the report. Because FBI officials can now peek at credit reports in secret, they're more likely to use the files to nab suspected spies and terrorists, a Justice Department official said. At the same time, the official said, it is less likely that FBI agents will go to the trouble of obtaining a person's full credit record, including the status of any current accounts. -----