With all the yammering by the anti-Bush press regarding the use of administrative summons, you would think this is some new violation of privacy unprecedented in modern times. It isn't.
In United States v. Miller (425 U.S. 435 (1976)), the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that a customer has no expectation to, or right of, privacy with respect to bank records. According to the Court, these records are the bank's and not the customers, so the customer need not be served with anything before the government can see them. All it takes is an administrative subpoena, sayeth the Court in 1976.
A thorough analysis of administrative subpoenas,written in 1978, shows an entire line of Supreme Court cases, largely intended to assist in funding the welfare state by finding tax cheats.
I suspect that the newspapers that decry the use of these subpoenas in the War on Terror had no problem when they were used in tax fishing expeditions during the War on Poverty.