National Security Letter Issuance Likely Headed To Supreme Court

Gunkerty Jeb writes The Ninth Circuit appeals court in San Francisco took oral arguments from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Department of Justice yesterday over the constitutionality of National Security Letters and the gag orders associated with them. The EFF defended a lower court's ruling that NSLs are unconstitutional, while the DoJ defended a separate ruling that NSLs can be enforced. Whatever the court rules, the issue of NSLs is all but certainly headed for the Supreme Court in the not too distant future.

Comments

Re:Balance of power

[jc42]

Sometimes it takes years/decades for power abuse to get curtailed (here's hoping...), but it seems this checks and balance thing can eventually grind through major issues like this. Not great, not perfect, glacially slow but it seems to be working...

So how would we know? Since it's all going on in secret, with severe punishments for anyone who speaks openly and truthfully about what they've been ordered to do, the only assumption that the proverbial "reasonable man" (or woman? ;-) would make is that we have no idea what they're planning to do to us next. This story could all be just "theater" to lead us to think that things are improving.

As long as the question "How would we know" is illegal for the participants to answer, we should simply assume the worst. We have a lot of history telling us what powerful leaders are likely to be doing to their own population when they enforce secrecy about their actions.