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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.
Maybe I am too much of an idealist (and give my country too much benefit of the doubt), but if SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) does its job, this madness (NSL's) will be stifled.
After, the American system is built on the assumption that one or two branches will attempt to subvert liberty, and that the other will reign them in.
In this case the executive and legislative have run amock and believe themselves capable of handling essentially limitless power. NSLs are an excellent example, we want information, and you can't even let anyone know what we want or even how often we want it. This is EXACTLY what the first amendment is intended to prevent, the government running amok and preventing its citizens from even discussing it. If the government is allowed to stifle this dissent, then representative government is lost and the despots are free to do what they want.
Hopefully, the judges on the Supreme Court have enough insight and morality to finally stop this and start the United States back onto a course of rule of law in accordance with the constitution that all have sworn to uphold.
By the way, hello to the NSA, glad you are reading along.
It really depends on the quality of parallel construction needed and what has to be presented in an open US court.
"Feds reviewing DEA policy of counterfeiting Facebook profiles" (Oct 9 2014)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
"Twitter says gag on surveillance scope is illegal “prior restraint”" (Oct 8 2014)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
US says it can hack into foreign-based servers without warrants (Oct 8 2014)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
It seems the NSL aspect is just one aspect a very complex, hidden way of getting and using data for later use in the US legal system.
In the past other surveillance programs like FAIRVIEW, OAKSTAR, RAMPART-A and WINDSTOP could bring in the data locally, globally via friendly nations and tame trusted big brands.
The NSL seems to just fit in between a global sorting and direct use in the US legal system.
It really depends how this plays out. Will the classic GCHQ view of not going to court so people feel like nothing telco related is going on?
Or the new US idea that surveillance is now of such a global reach and low cost that US courts can know and and will have to just understand "collect it all"?
The keys to a server and all users over time are now in play even if its just for legally finding one user for one case.
Once your servers are part of a case, who can legally say that case has stopped? Weeks, months, years of no crypto and all logs. All very legal now? Soon?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"