The data is obtained using broad administrative subpoenas, not court warrants.

The Treasury Department has used broad administrative subpoenas to get access to transactions from Swift, often millions of records at a time.

Lisa Lacher, a spokeswoman for the school, said the court had made Drake, which received a broad subpoena in the case, subject "to a nondisclosure order" about the matter.

Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.

He said he thought that the audits were warranted in light of the District Attorney's investigation, which included broad subpoenas of 14 locals and narrow subpoenas of 42 others.

"It was a very broad subpoena on very short notice," that was delivered on Monday evening, she said.

It was reported in the press that several days after the raids SAC had received "extraordinarily broad" subpoenas .

In an 8-to-1 decision, the court ruled that documents produced in response to a broad subpoena under a grant of immunity cannot be used as evidence if the prosecutor did not previously know of the documents' existence.

Mr. Davis apologized, in a way, for the delay in producing the tapes, which had been covered by a broad subpoena issued by Congress in January and specifically requested in mid-August.

News organizations have been fighting broad subpoenas for information about their sources in lawsuits filed by two tobacco companies, Brown & Williamson and Philip Morris.