Yahoo Becomes First Company To Disclose FBI National Security Letters (tumblr.com)

Yahoo has disclosed receipt of three national security letters (FBI requests for data that Yahoo is typically barred from sharing) and published redacted copies of the letters online for anyone to see. The company says that the move "marks the first time any company has publicly acknowledged receiving an NSL following the reforms of the USA Freedom Act." The bill was created last year allowing companies to gag orders relating to National Security Letters. Engadget reports: It takes some doing to get permission to acknowledge the receipt of a letter, too -- Yahoo says that the FBI needs to review if the nondisclosure provision is still necessary for each specific NSL before allowing a company to publish it, and even then certain information needs to be redacted before being made available to the public. Still, when companies do get these gag orders lifted, it allows them to notify the investigated parties that the FBI was looking into their data, and it's a big win for transparency overall.

Comments

"big win"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is this banal, monosyllabic expression now so diluted as to be meaningless, it's really, really not a "big win" for transparency if individual arbitrarily secret letters secured on the basis of absurd penalty can be exposed to the public long after they have ceased to be relevant.

It's not even a small win.

First Ammendment

[Anonymous Coward]

How is a gag order like this in the first place not a violation of the First Ammendment?