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Google Files First Amendment Challenge Against FISA Gag Order
The Washington Post reports that Google has filed a motion challenging the gag orders preventing it from disclosing information about the data requests it receives from government agencies. The motion cites the free speech protections of the First Amendment. "FISA court data requests typically are known only to small numbers of a company’s employees. Discussing the requests openly, either within or beyond the walls of an involved company, can violate federal law." From the filing (PDF): "On June 6, 2013, The Guardian newspaper published a story mischaracterizing the scope and nature of Google's receipt of and compliance with foreign intelligence surveillance requests. ... In light of the intense public interest generated by The Guardian's and Post's erroneous articles, and others that have followed them, Google seeks to increase its transparency with users and the public regarding its receipt of national security requests, if any. ... Google's reputation and business has been harmed by the false or misleading reports in the media, and Google's users are concerned by the allegation. Google must respond to such claims with more than generalities. ... In particular, Google seeks a declaratory judgment that Google as a right under the First Amendment to publish ... two aggregate unclassified numbers: (1) the total number of FISA requests it receives, if any; and (2) the total number of users or accounts encompassed within such requests."
Good luck with that. If they don't get blown out of the first Federal Court who hears it, we may have an actual chance to hear what the Government is actually requesting, not the sanitized and approved verbiage that has been coming out. Somewhere between what Snowden has been saying and the Government is allowing people to comment on, the truth may be found.
The Patriot Act needs to go and so does this secret court bullshit where information is handed over on a whim, not on a true judicial review.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
It doesn't look like anyone trusts what the government is saying about their FISA requests. Does anyone trust what Google says any better?
Proverbs 21:19
Seriously, what would the government do if Google just went ahead and released the information?
Uh...put people in Jail for breaking the law? There is no legal defense--so unless you want to move to China, you beg for permission to speak.
They will get blown out of the first court. Thats the norm.
But it hardly matters, because sooner or later it reaches the Supreme Court, and there is this little matter of the Constitution involved.
Every company with a web presences should grow a pair and join this suit.
Reasonable safeguards can be put in place (delays, or reviews in an open court by a REAL judge that actually attended law school),
but telling someone they can never reveal something is just plain wrong.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Discussing the requests openly, either within or beyond the walls of an involved company, can violate federal law
Any act of congress that purports to deny our freedom of speech is not a law at all, but a usurpation. Congress has no power to trump the constitution.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Once upon a time, I'd always heard that those types of gag orders were to prevent the individuals under investigation from being alerted so they couldn't hide evidence or flee, and I'm not opposed to that.
These days it seems to be more of a political move for the purposes of avoiding oversight and preventing the authorities from being charged with illegal, or at least immoral and unethical, activities.
That's what happens when your government can't be bothered to follow its own laws.
Know what else happens? People stop respecting the law, look what happened during Prohibition.
Free Martian Whores!
They're only asking to be allowed to release counts, not the content of the requests.
So they're only asking to release metadata, which according to Mr. Clapper isn't a type of data, so I don't see why the gov't would reject this.
Our government unilaterally rewrote the basic agreement between We, the People who are sovereign, and the government which is supposed to report to us. As a result, no citizen can understand the reasons behind the actions of his Representatives or the government. Thus, the government is sovereign as We, the People, have no control of it. This is treason. This is the functional equivalent to a coup, kept secret by the people who did it. We cannot allow the government to engage in anything that require secrecy, or we will be in this situation again. So, time to become a neutral nation the way the guys who wrote the Constitution intended. Bring the troops home and repudiate all of the treaties that allow them to be overseas. Repeal the acts enabling our NSA, CIA, FBI and FISA, as these are all more dangerous to us as citizens than anything they purport to protect us against. Purge the Department of Justice, which seems to exist to write memos justifying obviously bogus interpretations of laws and the Constitution. Remove every person from government who knew about, and did nothing to oppose, any episode of torture, drone attacks on US citizens, or any of this spying, Un-elect all Representatives who knew about and did nothing to oppose these things. Anything less than this, the coup will ultimately succeed.
Hey gang, we really might be morphing into "Web 3.0" in whichever of many things that means.
We're starting to enter the age of the Law Meta-Game.
Google does their fair share of morally complex things, but they haven't been called "stupid" very often.
So *because it's Google* and not some two-guys-and-a-garage operation, they're not so easy to shove in a corner. Even at the rate that lawyer fees rise, if some "typical" (as the cynics would say) "travesty of justice" occurred, that then becomes a hell of a Meta-Game news article.
"Google: We wanted to report on secret govt data requests. Govt said no."
You/they don't file motions like that "out of boredom on a Tuesday". They have the money to submit the motion and all the bells and whistles. So this might be the first of many kinds of steps it takes to slowly begin to roll back the Big Brother Engine. Not a lot, but they're helping to drag it into the sunlight where such scampery things don't like to be.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I just wish Snowden would clarify what the hell he's saying. I've read Q & A with him and I still can't work out exactly what people are looking at, how they're getting it, whether the looking has to be actively initiated or is passive, or anything else. We need more damned details, not more hyperbole. I'm by no means diminishing the value of his bringing PRISM to light, even if it turns out to be a much lesser problem than he seems to believe, but I don't really give a shit whether he believes it's the greatest assault on privacy in history, I want to know exactly what's been happening so I can decide whether I believe that it is or not. For a man whose goal was supposedly the open discussion of this thing, he's doing a pretty piss poor job of initiating one.