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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."
Nice seeing someone in the ISP world is concerned about basic rights like freedom of speech. If only we could know which ISP it was....
Make It Secret Protect your privacy
if breaking the law is never punished.
The FBI thinks there are 200,000 terrorists here!!?? Arent we in Iraq to keep from having them here. If there were 200,000 terrorists here there would be bombings every day. A number like 200,000 suggests to me that there is something other than terrorism of interest ... like screwing political opponents of the Bush regime.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
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.
However... 200,000 letters in less than 4 years and 97% of them received gag orders? That's just plain ridiculous. It's a classic example of an organization receiving power and then abusing it.
So, it's time to take that power away from them.
I'm a big tall mofo.
The solution is to have some kind of oversight. FISA is less than ideal, since it's secret, but there are perfectly good national security reasons for keeping some things that way. With the issuing over 200,000 unvetted letters such as these which typically automatically contain a gag order, I also cannot fathom how this FBI power is being used responsibly and not abused. I am a firm believer in the need for a government to conduct certain actions in secret, but we risk a complete erosion of our constitutional rights when a government is given such a powerful tool with absolutely zero oversight, secret or otherwise.
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.
I don't think you have done the wiretaps subject much justice with that post. The SCOTUS has affirmed the (Article II) right of the Executive branch to conduct warrant-less wiretaps on foreign targets, but it has stated that warrants are still required for domestic wiretaps. If you have evidence that Congress overrode the Court, I'd like to see it because such action by Congress would be unconstitutional. As for judicial oversight of NSLs, take a look at Wikipedia's coverage.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Secret warrants may be shady and sleazy, but they're perfectly in line with the 4th amendment. The 1st amendment also has security restrictions on it by court precedent, thus I think they'll have a hard time arguing that they have a first amendment right to tell their customers about a NSL.
Yup, the Bush administration broke the law, and congress retroactively made a law making it legal.
Tonight's top story: Government agencies headed by unelected bureaucrats violate citizens' constitutional rights. More at 11.
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
you're forgetting that citizens of the USA have certain civil rights.
Domestic terrorism as you call it does not fall under the umbrella of "terrorism" legislation. It falls under regular law enforcement.
That's because they are US citizens. The article is about how the civil rights of citizens is being violated by the FBI, who know they aren't supposed to issue NSLs except under dire circumstances. The point is, the FBI has begun using NSLs in lieu of warrants because it just makes their job easier. It's illegal to do what they're doing.
They're using their grammar skills there.
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.
It's really too bad that there isn't a *UN*-insightful moderation.
I don't think this is a troll, or flamebait. Just stupid and un-foresightful...or possibly totally lacking in a knowledge of history, and how government actions creep, and leadership changes.
Were it possible to have an ideally honest and upright government, AND to rely on it staying that way, then this proposal would be reasonable. To believe in that at this point appears willful blindness.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There are not 200,000 sheep out there. There are only a few (at most a few hundred) ISPs which acted like sheep, 200,000 times!
There is a difference. These NSLs were not to individuals, they went to ISPs.
Accountability
And how do we hold government officials accountable?
In this day and age of terrorist activities, computer virus, electronic theft, etc..., the government (FBI, CIA, etc...) they do need to do their jobs and our Free Speech and our Privacy are both going to have to bend when our security depends on it.
Why? What if our liberties are more valuable than our security?
You can't have it all, and certainly for those out there who have NOTHING to hide, who don't perform any criminal ventures, I doubt they care if Big Brother is watching over them.
I would like something more substantial than your doubt that the government is confining its attention to actual criminals.
So, as long as these agencies are truly accountable for their actions, we must let them do their jobs, I think that's really what this is all about. We may not like it, but then again, it is what it is.
Again, given the secrecy involved, how do we hold agencies accountable? Also, what is this "it" in your "it is what it is"?
Any disaster, crime that can be prevented, certainly we are all for that, no?
Typical government disregard for costs. We do not have an infinite anti-terror budget, so the cost of preventing one terrorist act may be the foregone opportunity to have prevented twenty others.