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FBI ISP Letters May Have Violated Free Speech
Anti-Globalism sends in a Reuters account of an appeals court hearing in which an unnamed ISP is challenging the Patriot Act "National Security Letter" provision that allows the FBI to issue secret letters to ISPs and telecoms, demanding customer records. "A panel of federal appeals court judges pushed a US government lawyer on Wednesday to answer why FBI letters sent out to Internet service providers seeking information should remain secret. ... Between 2003 and 2006 nearly 200,000 national security letters were sent out. Of those about 97 percent received gag orders."
Everyone's focused on the total number of NSL's used, and the gag orders placed on them. I'm more worried about that 3% that were used, but not really deemed important enough to put a gag order on. Were they really using this tool to stop terrorism, or get info on 6,000 political opponents?
I feel the gag orders are necessary for actual investigations. You can't have the ISP's sending letters to subscribers all the time when they get NSL's, especially if it's an actual terrorist they're trying to stop. But at the same time, we need to have limits put in place to protect the abuse of the system, and gag orders placed where they shouldn't be.
It's nice to see a little resistance to government corruption.
All of the U.S. government's many secret information-gathering departments and police departments believe that they can order executives of companies that do business in the U.S. to provide any help they want so that they can accomplish their purposes, whatever they are, and put the executives in prison if they reveal their activities.
Because of the surveillance, commerce in the U.S. is no longer safe. So international companies are taking their business elsewhere. That's one of the reasons for the economic downturn.
Taxpayers pay twice for the surveillance, once to have what are essentially activities of secret police, and another time as the economy is destroyed.
Often employees of U.S. government secret departments take jobs in commercial companies and pretend to be normal employees, while serving illegal purposes of the secret departments. So even companies in other countries cannot be trusted to be free of corrupt surveillance, paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
It is not a secret. There are plenty of books and articles about U.S. government surveillance. However, most people in the U.S. just don't want to believe the level of corruption is as great as it is. One purpose of having a huge amount of surveillance is to hide the surveillance that is really important to those who run things, whoever they are, the surveillance they use for profit.
Nice red herring there. Government bureaucracy has nothing to do with why you're in Iraq. In fact, Iraq is probably the most privatized war the USA has ever fought.
Government bureaucracy promotes inefficiency through civil servants using regulations to protect their jobs and their budgets, not through sending troops to far away lands (which is not to say they wouldn't be happy to let people die to protect budgets, and jobs). The US is in Iraq because George Bush, his advisors, and many corporations want the US to be in Iraq. Not because of government inefficiency.
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The FBI thinks there are 200,000 terrorists here!!??
No, it means that when you're looking for a needle in a haystack there's a helluva lot of straw. Probably some abuse too, but I think it mostly comes down to "We think there's some terrorists in the US, we haven't got a clue who or where they are, but it's your job to find them anyway." What do you do? You investigate any activity that might be in common with a terrorist, I'd be surprised if they could get a 1% hit rate on that, probably more like 0.1%-0.01% which would be 20-200. Now you can ask if it makes sense to investigate 199k+ others to find those, but the numbers as such aren't unrealistic.
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I'd like to know what the legal basis is for the gag order. There is a huge difference between someone who voluntarily agreed to all this stuff when they applied for a security clearance and J. Random Citizen. There is no "national security" exception in the Constitution.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
First I work for a phone company. Before you guys get sand in your vaginas, we were never served any subpoena, national security letter, or even asked if we would monitor anyone or anything. We have gotten subpoenas for simple fraud stuff that was going on through our network, and those all came with orders to remain silent (one FCC one related to fraud the rest were state issued). Its quite common that while an investigation is underway that gag orders are placed on the subpoenas or anything else to prevent those being monitored from knowing about it. This makes sense to a point, since revealing that its going on can mean nothing of value is said on the phone, and make the investigation somewhat more difficult. And before you guys get all upset, there are real criminals who commit real crimes over the phone.
So basically if it turns out that gag orders when issued from the government are not constitutional then a bunch will have to change. Subpoenas and the like issued to anyone may not be able to have the gag order, although usually that is done with judicial oversight so it would be a court order, which the constitution does allow.
Companies like the one I work for may or may not be obliged to honor the gag order after this case, and suspects can likely be tipped off (and for some employees they will look at this as an extra payday, to sell the people the information, or better to have them pay monthly fees to be notified immediately ... hmm maybe I am approaching this work thing all wrong)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
If the patriot act has it, that was a congressional thing, so it would apply. But again Judges are not Congress, as a result they can issue gag orders under the first amendment, so the vast vast majority of wiretaps will probably still have gag orders on them, at least until the case is disposed.
I don't agree at all.
Non enforcement does not negate the law. It does sort of make it pointless to have on the books, but it doesn't remove it automatically.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If the FBI writes a letter to an ISP to investigate possible criminal activity done by one of their customers through that ISP, it makes sense that the ISP shouldn't be allowed to tell the target they're being investigated.
That much makes sense, but the gag order covers any mention that you have recieved such a letter at all. That is, you can become an instant felon just by going home and telling your spouse why you're late (even if you leave out all details about who they wanted data on).
More significantly, if they turn it into a fishing expedition by not narrowing the information down (we want the browsing history of every customer for the last 5 years), you become a felon if you tell the EFF.
While now corrected (only under threat of a constitutional challenge), the original form made you a felon if you told your LAWYER or a COURT about the order. While now corrected, the mere fact that such a provision ever existed tells us a lot about the intent of the act's supporters.
Interestingly, since I would think most everyone would voluntarily keep quiet if the FBI put its cards on the table and demonstrated in any way that talking might help a genuine terrorist, the primary purpose of the gag order is to act as a bludgeon to secure silence when the investigation is questionable in the first place. They got by just fine for decades relying on law abiding citizens to voluntarily not tip off criminals of all sorts.
Exactly this sort and magnitude of abuse was predicted before the act even passed. It wasn't exactly a surprise.
The full contents of the letter and all details would be on CNN within a week of these fascists trying to scare me. Consequences be damned, you throw around that Ben Franklin quote around enough, practice what you preach.
I want to know why there are 200,000 weak minded, pathetic scared sheep out there who are willing to bow down like this.
Further, you can't tell me there are no /. readers who have received one. Where are the anonymous stories? Are you ~all~ appeasers? History will not be kind to us I'm afraid.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/clinton_vs_obama_on_iraq.html
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