KGB Could Not Have Done It Better

"The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution… No person shall disclose to any other person (other than those persons necessary to produce the tangible things under this section) that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained tangible things under this section."

In other words, they can do it and we can't know. Nothing civil about it. Note, by the way, that "not conducted solely…" which assumedly means that an investigation can be conducted against "activities protected by the first amendment." And keep in mind that the man now testifying, before he morphed into the Attorney General of the increasingly ill-named Justice Department, was sitting in the White House Counsel's office overseeing some of the most pretzled language and tortured logic ever-produced to create a prosecution-free basis for promoting a presidential regime of torture throughout our various jails, camps, and detention centers then being set up abroad.

Creating an Uncivil Society