Government agencies are avoiding judicial approval for search warrants hundreds of thousands of times a year, and it’s all legal.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and numerous other agencies are bypassing judges through the use of administrative subpoenas. These search warrants don’t require court approval, while allowing government agents to obtain records from almost any type of business—including banks, phone companies, hospitals and Internet service providers.

According to David Kravets of Wired, Congress has adopted more than 330 laws that grant the use of administrative subpoena power to dozens of federal offices. This has resulted in agencies issuing hundreds of thousands of these subpoenas every year, without having to officially report just how many of them are being served.

Among the more esoteric laws authorizing the use of administrative subpoenas, as highlighted by Kravets, are “the Agriculture Department’s power to investigate breaches of the Floral Research and Consumer Information Act and the Fresh Cut Flowers and Fresh Cut Greens Promotion and Information Act,” and the Commerce Department’s “administrative subpoena power for enforcing laws relating to the Atlantic tuna and the Northern Pacific halibut.”

Some federal operations, like the FBI, have been exposed for abusing the administrative subpoena and illegally collecting personal information of Americans.

“I think this is out of control. What has happened is, unfortunately, these statutes have been on the books for many, many years and the courts have acquiesced,” Joe Evans, an attorney for Golden Valley Electric Association in Alaska, told Wired after unsuccessfully fighting an administrative subpoena served by the DEA.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

We Don’t Need No Stinking Warrant: The Disturbing, Unchecked Rise of the Administrative Subpoena (by David Kravets, Wired)