I looked briefly and found a reply from the SEC about it, and what they say it's for:
http://businessjournalism.org/2010/0...ancial-reform/
?The new provision applies to information obtained through examinations or derived from that information. We are expanding our examination program?s surveillance and risk assessment efforts in order to provide more sophisticated and effective Wall Street oversight. The success of these efforts depends on our ability to obtain documents and other information from brokers, investment advisers and other registrants. The new legislation makes certain that we can obtain documents from registrants for risk assessment and surveillance under similar conditions that already exist by law for our examinations. Because registrants insist on confidential treatment of their documents, this new provision also removes an opportunity for brokers, investment advisers and other registrants to refuse to cooperate with our examination document requests.?