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FBI ISP Letters May Have Violated Free Speech

Posted by kdawson on from the tell-me-and-zip-it dept.

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."

6 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. At last by monsul · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:At last by chasingsol · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, the judge ruled out Verizon and AT&T by using them as examples. Considering the relatively limited number of large ISP's in the USA, the chance is that it was directed at the largest of all... Comcast. I doubt a smaller ISP would dare go up against the federal government, lawuits such as these are notorious for taking years (decades?) to go anywhere. Unfortunately, it would seem likely that ultimately the lawsuit will be thrown out for "national security" reasons, as so many others have since the passing of the Patriot Act.

  2. It's not a violation........ by budword · · Score: 5, Insightful

    if breaking the law is never punished.

  3. Nice seeing a little resistance to corruption by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Not unconstitutional on their face by chasingsol · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here's your problem. The 4th amendment is typically protected by a judge signing the search warrant, which provides oversight against abuses. Even the secret FISA court provides oversight. The problem here, there is NO oversight whatsoever. That's not conforming to the spirit of the 4th amendment at all.

  5. Re:Classic Corruption of Power by schon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    No it doesn't - not even a little bit.

    Now, if the FBI obtained a court-ordered *warrant* for an ISP to turn over information in regards to possible criminal activity, *then* it would make sense that the ISP shouldn't be allowed to tell the target they're being investigated (and I'm sure there's some mechanism that allows this.)

    The critical difference of course, is judicial oversight. The FBI doesn't want to have to deal with warrants and their pesky inconveniences.