Slashdot Mirror
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.
"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"
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."
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 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
The Wired article claims that this is being challenged by a small telecom company called Credo.