U.S. citizens put under intense secret terror surveillance: report

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government has put average Americans under intense surveillance as part of terrorism investigations, says the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2006 issued on Thursday. According to a U.S. survey released in December 2006, "two-thirds of Americans believe that the FBI and other federal agencies are intruding on their privacy rights," the report says.

And the U.S. Justice Department said in a report released on April 28, 2006 that its use of electronic surveillance and search warrants in national security investigations jumped 15 percent in 2005. According to the department, the FBI issued 9,254 national security letters in 2005, covering 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal foreign residents. The data did not include what probably were thousands of additional letters issued to obtain more limited information about some individuals or letters that were issued about targets who were in the United States. illegally, it says.