# National security letters > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "National security letters," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/national-security-letters/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *The demand letters the FBI began sending internet service providers after 2001, which John Kiriakou describes as one of three mechanisms that between them retired the warrant requirement for obtaining Americans' personal information. The other two are the FISA process and the outright purchase of metadata from social-media companies.* - **Issued by:** The [FBI](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fbi), without judicial approval - **Introduced:** Immediately after the September 11 attacks - **Recipients:** Internet service providers and, later, large technology companies - **Deadline given:** 48 hours - **Kiriakou''s point:** 'Okay, that''s not a warrant' - **Who receives them:** Former [FBI](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fbi) leadership, now employed by the companies A **national security letter** is a demand for records issued by the [FBI](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fbi) without a judge's approval. [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) treats it as the second of three mechanisms by which, after 2001, the warrant requirement for Americans' personal information was worked around rather than repealed. ## The baseline he sets against it Kiriakou's framing starts from what the rule used to be. For as long as the bureau had existed, *"not 250 years, since the FBI was founded in the early 1920s"*, obtaining personal information about an American required a warrant: *"You have to go before a judge, you have to have probable cause, you have to do it with a warrant. They don't anymore."*[1] ## The three workarounds The first, he says, was [FISA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fisa). The second was the letters themselves, introduced *"right after 9/11"* and sent to internet service providers, *"which were just like threatening letters to the ISP providers saying, 'we're the FBI and you're not, and we want this information, and you have 48 hours to cough it up.' Okay, that's not a warrant."*[1] The third is commercial. *"The social media platforms sell our metadata to anybody who wants to pay. And so why would the FBI go before a judge and have to make a probable-cause argument when they can just go to Meta and just buy it?"*[2] ## Who is on the receiving end Kiriakou's closing observation is about the identity of the recipient rather than the legality of the letter. *"Guess who's receiving those letters at the big tech companies, former FBI leadership."* Following [the revolving door](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-big-tech-revolving-door) between the bureau, the agency and the technology industry, he says, *"it's a CIA/FBI person writing a letter to someone who months before was a CIA/FBI person, and you're just the deliverable. You, the American public."*[3][4] ## Designing around them Kiriakou has described the letters as a design constraint that engineering can answer where law cannot. The feature of [Panquake](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/panquake) that convinced him the project was serious was its jurisdiction: hosting in Iceland meant it was *"not subject to a national security letter from the FBI demanding all of your user data and all this other nonsense that we see all the time in the news."*[5] He also identifies the letters as the instrument behind the industry-wide compliance disclosed by WikiLeaks a decade earlier, *"every last one of them was providing information to the CIA and to NSA and to the FBI with these national security letters."*[6] ## See also - [Government Purchase of Social Media Metadata](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/government-metadata-purchase) - [Purchased data as a warrant workaround](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/purchased-data-warrant-workaround) - [CIA–Big Tech revolving door](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-big-tech-revolving-door) - [FISA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fisa) - [Mass Surveillance](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mass-surveillance) - [FBI](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fbi) ## Sources 1. One America News Network (2026-02-27), at 53:38. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulc3YGqjKvk&t=3218s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-27-one-america-news-network-one-america-news-network/ 2. One America News Network (2026-02-27), at 55:12. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulc3YGqjKvk&t=3312s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-27-one-america-news-network-one-america-news-network/ 3. One America News Network (2026-02-27), at 55:43. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulc3YGqjKvk&t=3343s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-27-one-america-news-network-one-america-news-network/ 4. One America News Network (2026-02-27), at 56:14. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulc3YGqjKvk&t=3374s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-27-one-america-news-network-one-america-news-network/ 5. FULL INTERVIEW: Kiriakou & Sean O'Brien talk Panquake (2022-05-05), at 07:51. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwO3anoP4ho&t=471s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2022-05-05-panquake-lee-camp-full-interview-kiriakou-sean-o-brien-talk-pan/ 6. FULL INTERVIEW: Kiriakou & Sean O'Brien talk Panquake (2022-05-05), at 08:53. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwO3anoP4ho&t=533s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2022-05-05-panquake-lee-camp-full-interview-kiriakou-sean-o-brien-talk-pan/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/national-security-letters/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt