12-17-2008, 11:04 AM
The provision that made it unlawful to disclose whether you had received a "national security letter" has been overturned.
This is a good thing.
The letters are effectively unlimited administrative subpoenas, made without any need to show cause and without judicial supervision.
Under a common reading of the law, a recipient wouldn't even be allowed to consult an attorney to see what his rights were.
The FBI, CIA, DHS and the military have allegedly been abusing the power of national security letters, sending out thousands or even tens of thousands of them to as shortcuts to avoid performing their own investigations, for purposes of harassment and to avoid judicial oversight of illegal investigations.
The FBI's own audits have suggested that at least 1000 national security letters were sent out inappropriately. Some reports have suggested that the FBI alone has underreported such events by a factor of 10 and that the number of national security letters issued is actuallymany many times greater than the number that shows up in official reports.
Now that the gag orders are no longer enforceable without a judge signing off on them those abuses can be investigated effectively.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Court_side..._1216.html
This is a good thing.
The letters are effectively unlimited administrative subpoenas, made without any need to show cause and without judicial supervision.
Under a common reading of the law, a recipient wouldn't even be allowed to consult an attorney to see what his rights were.
The FBI, CIA, DHS and the military have allegedly been abusing the power of national security letters, sending out thousands or even tens of thousands of them to as shortcuts to avoid performing their own investigations, for purposes of harassment and to avoid judicial oversight of illegal investigations.
The FBI's own audits have suggested that at least 1000 national security letters were sent out inappropriately. Some reports have suggested that the FBI alone has underreported such events by a factor of 10 and that the number of national security letters issued is actuallymany many times greater than the number that shows up in official reports.
Now that the gag orders are no longer enforceable without a judge signing off on them those abuses can be investigated effectively.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Court_side..._1216.html
A federal appeals court ruling late Monday is the cause célèbre of the American Civil Liberties Union, as another provision of the Bush administration's Patriot Act falls to the judicial system.
Until the ruling, recipients of so-called "national security letters" were legally forbidden from speaking out. The letters, usually a demand for documents, or a notice that private records had been searched by government authorities, were criticized as a cover-all for FBI abuses.
"The appeals court invalidated parts of the statute that wrongly placed the burden on NSL recipients to initiate judicial review of gag orders, holding that the government has the burden to go to court and justify silencing NSL recipients," said the ACLU in a release. "The appeals court also invalidated parts of the statute that narrowly limited judicial review of the gag orders – provisions that required the courts to treat the government's claims about the need for secrecy as conclusive and required the courts to defer entirely to the executive branch."