In our democratic society, businesses have always been responsible for their own mistakes. Amid the war on terror, they are increasingly being held responsible for the mistakes of government officials as well.

Last year, AT&T, Verizon, and others were sued by many plaintiffs because of unintentional mistakes made by the National Security Agency. Now come governmental disclosures of mistakes in compliance with the Patriot Act.

The Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Justice recently released two reports describing isolated instances when the FBI failed to comply with provisions of the Patriot Act. The reports should be particularly troubling to businesses in the telecommunications and banking sectors.

Much of the public reaction to the reports is predictable and proper. Civil libertarians, as they should, complain about unlawful government behavior. Congress, as it should, will hold oversight hearings and perhaps refine the Patriot Act. A few government officials will face tough questions.

However, the largest burden of the failure of the government to comply meticulously with the Patriot Act will fall not on the responsible government employees but on the scores of private businesses that reasonably complied with information requests from the government. Lawsuits for improper use of the Patriot Act can be expected not so much against government agencies, which are largely protected from such liability, but against cooperating private businesses, which are not.

The two unclassified DOJ reports are troubling for many reasons. First, they contain information about internal governmental procedures entirely inappropriate to be in the public domain. Criminals and terrorists who monitor the DOJ Web site will enjoy the roadmap American government provides to its inadequacies.

The average bureaucratic delay for law enforcement officials to obtain information under Section 215 of the Patriot Act declined to less than six months in 2005 from nearly nine months in 2003. National security letters are much easier to obtain, and each year tens of thousands are granted. These letters entitle law enforcement officers to information from telephone companies, Internet service providers, credit bureaus, and banks.

Among the tens of thousands of such letters, the Inspector General identifies a few dozen improper uses, practically all of which were inadvertent and unlikely to have caused harm. The reports highlight these exceptional inappropriate uses. In most, if not all, instances, additional care on the part of the business releasing information would not have affected the problem of a law enforcement agency lacking legal foundation. Although individual companies are not identified, the DOJ reports will foster requests for more detailed information to fuel lawsuits.

It is troubling when private businesses are held accountable for governmental mistakes. Even more disturbing, however, is the consequential future behavior of telephone, Internet, credit, and banking companies. In the future, such companies may reasonably conclude that cooperating with the government is bad business no matter how worthy the cause. When private businesses perceive liability risk in cooperating with the government in the war on terror, we are all the poorer.

The best antidote for terrorism is public confidence in the public institutions responsible for combating it. That confidence is eroded by disclosures of inadvertent and inconsequential governmental mistakes, and by a legal system that protects potential terrorists as much as those fighting them.

The Hudson Institute is organizing a timely seminar series on the intersection of communications policy with national and homeland security policy. The inaugural lecture is March 21 at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. Judge Richard Posner of the University of Chicago Law School, one of the finest minds of our generation, will address the “Overjudicialization of Counterterrorism.” If we are to defeat terrorism, our laws and judicial system must reasonably reinforce incentives for businesses and individuals to assist the government in that fight.

A former FCC commissioner, Mr. Furchtgott-Roth is president of Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises. He is organizing the seminar series at the Hudson Institute. He can be reached at hfr@furchtgott-roth.com.