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EFF Challenges National Security Letter
sunbird writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court in San Francisco on behalf of an anonymous petitioner seeking to challenge a National Security Letter (NSL) the petitioner had received. NSLs are issued by law enforcement with neither judicial oversight nor probable cause, and have been discussed on Slashdot before. In response to the lawsuit, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a separate lawsuit against the individual who had received the NSL, requesting that the court order the recipient to comply with the NSL and asking the court to find that the 'failure to comply with a lawfully issued National Security Letter interferes with the United States' vindication of its sovereign interests in law enforcement, counterintelligence, and protecting national security.' Both cases are filed under seal, but heavily-redacted filings are available. The cases remain pending."
We've managed to reinvent the Lettre de cachet!
Department of Justice filed a separate lawsuit against the individual who had received the NSL, requesting that the court order the recipient to comply with the NSL and asking the court to find that the 'failure to comply with a lawfully issued National Security Letter interferes with the United States' vindication of its sovereign interests in law enforcement, counterintelligence, and protecting national security.'
NSLs are issued by law enforcement with neither judicial oversight nor probable cause
Time for the supreme court to strike NSLs down.
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Don't click that link at work. It's the same gay 69 jpg from yesterday.
Its a good thing this court is in the USA. It's like another part of the SAME GOVERNMENT.
Courts don't take kindly to executive branch letters claiming the court cant be involved. My take is that this letter was petty enough, and not urgent, that the EFF thinks they have a shot at getting a judge to review it.
Wow, it's July 17 all over again.
Don't click that link at work. It's the same gay 69 jpg from yesterday.
So do you recommend clicking on that link at home?
"failure to comply with a lawfully issued National Security Letter interferes with the United States' vindication of its sovereign interests in law enforcement, counterintelligence, and protecting national security."
Vindication???
That's an odd choice of words. Almost like revenge. (shrug). I would argue that the NSL violates the U.S. Constitution's requirement of a judge-issued search warrant, and an individual's right to be secure in his person, papers, and effects. Therefore the letter is null-and-void from the date of its creation. It is as if the letter never existed, because it has zero force of law.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I didn't see the gay 69 pic from yesterday, thanks for bringing it to my attention!
No NSL is legally issued. They are searches without judicial oversight, and prior restraints on free speech. In violation of amendments 4 and 1. Anyone who made an oath to uphold the constitution would be breaking it if they enforced or issued a NSL in any way.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
from the article:
"EFF brought its challenge on behalf of its client in May of 2011, raising these and other fundamental due process and First Amendment concerns about the structure of these problematic statutes. In response, the Department of Justice promptly filed a civil complaint against the recipient, alleging that by "stat[ing] its objection to compliance with the provisions of" the NSL by "exercis[ing] its rights under" the NSL statute to challenge the NSL's legality, the recipient was "interfer[ing] with the United States' vindication of its sovereign interests in law enforcement, counterintelligence, and protecting national security." "
Ironically, I'm reading 1984 right now. Sounds to me like doublethink. You have the right to challenge the NSL's legality but you have no right to challenge the NSL's legality.
"Freedom is slavery, slavery is freedom."
So the letters are ignored. Then the courts have to enforce the punishment. Except that the courts refuse because the supreme court rules they cannot breech the constitutional rights of the individual.
Therefore, though now in breech of the restrictions of the NSL, there is no crime prosecuted.
Why, therefore, does the NSL have to be ruled against? Just rule against the courts applying themselves to punishment for not following them.
The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) ... guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects witnesses from being forced to incriminate themselves:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
I was expecting Goatse.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you are into that sort of thing, then sure.
That makes no sense. Even the example given, "party A dialed party B" *is* content. If they have to get information from you, that is content, isn't it?
Also, how is something "less illegal" - I mean, something is pretty much either legal or illegal. I don't see how there's exactly degrees of legality?
The went to court to force the receiver to comply with the NSL. However they wouldn't go to court to get a warrant in the first place. The court can be trusted to enforce the NSL, but not trusted to issue the warrant that would have avoided the NSL in the first place.
This is a power grab, they're trying to establish the NSL as a legal authority to bypass court issued warrants. They normally withdraw NSLs when challenged because they don't want to lose the ability to issue them.
Normally the company that receives them will be ATNT or similar, and won't challenge them, just hand over the customer data. The NSL gives them a legal excuse for handing over private customer data beyond what a court would issue, and without having to justify it. Better still the NSL gives them an excuse for keeping it secret, thus avoiding bad publicity.
So Justice Dept must think this would be a good case to use for a land grab, or perhaps it some political game timed for an election. You can never tell with these civil servants.
You had no say in this. You (like most people) probably didn't even know it was happening. That was by design, and the fact that "we" didn't even know says a lot more about the differences between government and the people rather than the similarities.
a number of amendments are of the form "section X paragraph Y shall be changed to read...." since they are to be considered Patches to the Constitution. So Yes the SCOTUS does rule on the Bill of Rights. (trying to stick an unneeded "original" in does nothing since the SCOTUS must rule on the Constitution AS CURRENTLY AMENDED.
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No, I'm not new here -- but the links I followed were all from mid-2011. Has anything happened more recently?
IMHO, many (but not all) NSLs are an inherently Unconstitutional and innate violation of our rights at the hand of a powerful authority. In that case the only appropriate response is to simply hold a press release and disgourge the entire contents of the NSL, regardless of the law. Attempting to use the machinery of the very state which is oppressing you, in order to achieve justice, is absurd.
The 'NSL' is simply cops writing their own search warrants. Direct violation of the 4th Amendment.
The relevant statute also violated the First Amendment because it is illegal for a 3rd party record holder (library, book store, etc,) to inform the individual that their records have been accessed.
Hopefully it gets to the SCOTUS and the whole Patriot Act is ruled un-Constitutional.
I read through a couple of the documents (first and last), and it seems that the FBI lawyers either don't get it or are being intentionally evasive about the issues. Their first-amendment counter-arguments, though, seem to boil down to the following:
* The phone records aren't protected by the first amendment because the parties that want to talk are in a business relationship.
* This censorship isn't harming the company or the subscriber because even if the NSL were public the company wouldn't lose any customers over it. The FBI is sending these letters to everyone, and everyone else is complying, so it's not like the customer can switch providers to get away from it.
* The FBI is interested in the call logs to see who the subscriber is associating with, but this isn't 1960's Alabama, and the customer isn't a member of the NAACP with KKK looking to burn crosses on their lawn as soon as the membership list goes public - the EFF hasn't shown that a specific harm will come to the phone company or the customer as a result of providing the information requested or keeping quiet about it being provided.
The "doesn't get it" part is that the FBI seems intent on ignoring the gag order parts of the NSL in favor of arguing "we totally have a right to that information, and you have no right to keep it from us". It's just amazing, though, that they're able with wide-eyed innocence to ask "what's the harm?" to the judge, as if they were not actively looking to deprive someone of their liberty or life based on associations they'd discover with this request. I guess in their mind that it's OK because it's the FBI instead of the KKK that's doing it - national security and all that. Oh, and the "we're harming everyone the same way, so this specific instance is OK" stance is mind-boggling, too.
Perhaps there's other documents I haven't read that deal with that separately; the most recent filing was a request to compel compliance. I'm sure I'm missing lost of fun details, and that someone with more legal experience could poke more holes in this; it's cases like these that need a running commentary by someone like PJ from Groklaw...
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Can I supersize that Lettre de Cachet into a Star Chamber ...?
-kgj
The citizen is the sovereign. He gives/loans some limited sovereignty to the government to do critical tasks like protecting borders, fighting foreign powers. The constitution is not silent on a sovereign's right to security in its (their) papers and things and person. The NSA is acting in literal violation of the constitution.
I have no idea what laws or regulations they are violating because so many are secret or are rewritten every couple of months and published in the federal Register as if that is a valid law governing the citizen.
The government does not have unlimited sovereignty. The citizen does.
JJ
The Wired article claims that this is being challenged by a small telecom company called Credo.
We're supposed to refer to them as the Internation Jewlers Convention.
what Peter implied I'm blown away that some one able to get paid $8171 in 4 weeks on the computer. did you look at this website http://goo.gl/UUZFR
I'm not surprised.
In the UK they hand over all the money you have in your business bank account to any criminal, provided that criminal follows the following process:
1 - change the corporate records to show the criminal is a business owner. This change is a criminal offence, but there is zero checking done - you have to guard your records somehow yourself.
2 - site "problems" with those who operate the business. This will cause HSBC to close the account because they don't want to be dragged into the dispute.
3 - HSBC will make out the account closing cheque to the owner on record, and send it to the address on record - remember that this record was changed by the criminal, so he gets the cheque. Notice that there is thus ZERO requirement for the criminal to be on the account mandate, which is why he/she uses the simple change to your formal company record. That is a criminal offence, but UK police is simply not interested in following that up so it's a pretty safe thing to do from a criminal perspective.
4 - Profit! And your money is gone - which means you cannot afford the lawyer to take HSBC to court.
To clean up:
- you will find the police is not interested in pursuing a criminal offence. As in NOT interested. This leaves you only with civil process to work - for which you need the money they just gave away.
- it makes no difference if you warn them in advance this is happening, even if your lawyer does it - they will do this anyway.
- you will find HSBC will hide behind the banking ombudsman, who will sit on your complaint for at least 6 months before then telling you they can't handle it. This means you're guaranteed to be without any recourse for at least 6 month, by which time any chance of resurrecting your business will have vanished.
It's not a bank I would touch with a very long barge pole for any business.