Who could've imagined... "ACLU: Military Skirting Law to Spy." On whom, ya might ask? Service members and DoD employees, of course! There's terrorists amongst us it would seem, they claim their illegal activities are necessary to find ``unusual financial activity of people affiliated with DoD can be an indication of potential espionage or terrorist-related activity.'' How far and deep have they gone?

Goodman, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, said the military is allowed to demand financial and credit records in certain instances but does not have the authority to get e-mail and phone records or lists of Web sites that people have visited. That is the kind of information that the FBI can get by using a national security letter, she said.

``That's why we're particularly concerned. The DoD may be accessing the kinds of records they are not allowed to get,'' she said.

But, don't fret, they say it's all good...

A department spokesman, Air Force Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder, said in an e-mail that the department had made ``focused, limited and judicious'' use of the letters since Congress extended the capability to investigatory entities other than the FBI in 2001.

He said the department had acted legally in using a necessary investigatory tool and noted that ``unusual financial activity of people affiliated with DoD can be an indication of potential espionage or terrorist-related activity.''

Ryder said the information in the ACLU claims came in part from an internal review of DoD's use of the letters.

``We have since developed training and provided it to the services for their use,'' he said.

He said that there was no law requiring it to track use of the letters but that the department had decided it was in its best interest to do so.

Feel better? Good... Here's some other shenanigans...

- The Navy's use of the letters to demand domestic records has increased significantly since the Sept. 11 attacks.

- The military wrongly claimed its use of the letters was limited to investigating only Defense Department employees.

- The Defense Department has not kept track of how many national security letters the military issues or what information it obtained through the orders.

- The military provided misleading information to Congress and silenced letter recipients from speaking out about the records requests.

Thank you, Rummy and Shrub!