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FBI ISP Letters May Have Violated Free Speech
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Aug 31, 2008 07:13 AM
from the tell-me-and-zip-it dept.
from the tell-me-and-zip-it dept.
Anti-Globalism sends in a Reuters account of an appeals court hearing in which an unnamed ISP is challenging the Patriot Act "National Security Letter" provision that allows the FBI to issue secret letters to ISPs and telecoms, demanding customer records. "A panel of federal appeals court judges pushed a US government lawyer on Wednesday to answer why FBI letters sent out to Internet service providers seeking information should remain secret. ... Between 2003 and 2006 nearly 200,000 national security letters were sent out. Of those about 97 percent received gag orders."
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At last (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:At last (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:At last (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary, a big company like Comcast has too much to lose to rock the boat. A small, private ISP is less likely to be worried about shareholders since it may be employee-owned by people with strong convictions about freedom.
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Especially since they are pissing everyone off and are under investigation as it is.
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This is an ISP that cares nothing about freedom of speech
They don't hold a monopoly on that, most large corporations are like that.
Nice seeing a little resistance to corruption (Score:5, Interesting)
It's nice to see a little resistance to government corruption.
All of the U.S. government's many secret information-gathering departments and police departments believe that they can order executives of companies that do business in the U.S. to provide any help they want so that they can accomplish their purposes, whatever they are, and put the executives in prison if they reveal their activities.
Because of the surveillance, commerce in the U.S. is no longer safe. So international companies are taking their business elsewhere. That's one of the reasons for the economic downturn.
Taxpayers pay twice for the surveillance, once to have what are essentially activities of secret police, and another time as the economy is destroyed.
Often employees of U.S. government secret departments take jobs in commercial companies and pretend to be normal employees, while serving illegal purposes of the secret departments. So even companies in other countries cannot be trusted to be free of corrupt surveillance, paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
It is not a secret. There are plenty of books and articles about U.S. government surveillance. However, most people in the U.S. just don't want to believe the level of corruption is as great as it is. One purpose of having a huge amount of surveillance is to hide the surveillance that is really important to those who run things, whoever they are, the surveillance they use for profit.
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Two questions:
is a good idea? The licenses for all these pursuits, which are considered a "privilege, not a right," can be taken away — by the Executive Government (such as FCC) — on a whim, without any court-decision. At best, you may be able to get a court-order of your own
It's not a violation........ (Score:5, Insightful)
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if breaking the law is never punished.
Attorney General Mukasey, is that you? [thehill.com]
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I don't agree at all.
Non enforcement does not negate the law. It does sort of make it pointless to have on the books, but it doesn't remove it automatically.
200,000? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not that there are 200,000 terrorists, it's just that they felt they needed that many letters while trying to track down the 5-10 terrorists they're looking for.
Kind of like sending 140,000 troops to Iraq to try to find 1 guy who is hiding somewhere on the Afghanistan Pakistan border. There's nothing so inefficient as government bureaucracy.
Re:200,000? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice red herring there. Government bureaucracy has nothing to do with why you're in Iraq. In fact, Iraq is probably the most privatized war the USA has ever fought.
Government bureaucracy promotes inefficiency through civil servants using regulations to protect their jobs and their budgets, not through sending troops to far away lands (which is not to say they wouldn't be happy to let people die to protect budgets, and jobs). The US is in Iraq because George Bush, his advisors, and many corporations want the US to be in Iraq. Not because of government inefficiency.
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You forgot about the people who support and reelected Bush.
Re:200,000? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh right, Diebold, Sequoia Systems, ESS, and almost half of the ordinary folks. You're correct.
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The US is in Iraq because George Bush, his advisors, and many corporations want the US to be in Iraq.
You might be able to convince some folks that we were in Iraq for the first 60 days because of whatever theory you care to advance. But, if you take a look at the War Powers Resolution [wikipedia.org] you may notice that in order to remain there required the approval of Congress. I submit to you, we're still there because Congress voted to approve the war against Iraq [cnn.com].
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That number almost certainly does not represent how many terrorists the FBI believes to be here. It is far more likely that the NSLs were issued during the course of investigations to determine if the subject has any terrorist connections, and I would bet only a (extremely) tiny fraction of them actually did.
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The list for flying is over a million names. At 200k to 1 million I'd say the terrorists should start their own country already so we can just nuke them :)
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That's assuming, of course, that the one million people who oppose the US government should be considered the "bad guys".
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I am perfectly willing to become a "bad guy" if my government continues to commit heinous crimes in the name of "the People" .
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Recently, actor Michael Caine was stopped and detained for special evaluation before being allowed to board a plane in the U. S.. He'd had to deal with a business matter, the delay caused him to be separated from his wife, who went ahead with the luggage, and he got a new ticket just to catch up to her. So, he was a solo traveler, foreign national, had no luggage, and had a 1 way ticket. Arguably, if Caine wasn't somebody well known, he would most likely have ended up on a permanent list. The no-fly lists a
Re:200,000? (Score:4, Interesting)
The FBI thinks there are 200,000 terrorists here!!??
No, it means that when you're looking for a needle in a haystack there's a helluva lot of straw. Probably some abuse too, but I think it mostly comes down to "We think there's some terrorists in the US, we haven't got a clue who or where they are, but it's your job to find them anyway." What do you do? You investigate any activity that might be in common with a terrorist, I'd be surprised if they could get a 1% hit rate on that, probably more like 0.1%-0.01% which would be 20-200. Now you can ask if it makes sense to investigate 199k+ others to find those, but the numbers as such aren't unrealistic.
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No, we're in Iraq to remove the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction that could otherwise have been launched within 45 minutes. At least that's what they told me.
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The FBI thinks there are 200,000 terrorists here!
I deem it unlikely. Even if counting all the local politicians and not only the airheads in D.C., you won't even get close to 200,000.
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I doubt that. 200K is much too small a number for that particular scenario.
Classic Corruption of Power (Score:5, Insightful)
However... 200,000 letters in less than 4 years and 97% of them received gag orders? That's just plain ridiculous. It's a classic example of an organization receiving power and then abusing it.
So, it's time to take that power away from them.
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Taking power away is not necessarily a good idea or even a solution. But every kind of power demands a controlling instance to prevent abuse. And the more potent the power (and limiting freedom of speech and invasion of personal space does count as "quite potent" in my books), the more control it requires.
That is the original idea between the separation of powers. When you split up creation of laws, execution of laws and judgement over laws, you should create a system that allows the three powers to control
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Actually, taking the power away is the only historically effective solution. It will force the agencies impacted to re-evaluate their approach to surveillance, and to find a way to do it that complies with the law. That's what happened with wiretapping, and it ultimately led to the creation of the FISA court (the overseeing body you noted is missing from the current equation.)
However, the USA PATRIOT Act's current expansion of monitoring explicitly sidestepped the FISA mechanism for reasons that were n
Re:Classic Corruption of Power (Score:5, Insightful)
If the FBI writes a letter to an ISP to investigate possible criminal activity done by one of their customers through that ISP, it makes sense that the ISP shouldn't be allowed to tell the target they're being investigated.
No it doesn't - not even a little bit.
Now, if the FBI obtained a court-ordered *warrant* for an ISP to turn over information in regards to possible criminal activity, *then* it would make sense that the ISP shouldn't be allowed to tell the target they're being investigated (and I'm sure there's some mechanism that allows this.)
The critical difference of course, is judicial oversight. The FBI doesn't want to have to deal with warrants and their pesky inconveniences.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If the FBI writes a letter to an ISP to investigate possible criminal activity done by one of their customers through that ISP, it makes sense that the ISP shouldn't be allowed to tell the target they're being investigated.
That much makes sense, but the gag order covers any mention that you have recieved such a letter at all. That is, you can become an instant felon just by going home and telling your spouse why you're late (even if you leave out all details about who they wanted data on).
More significantly, if they turn it into a fishing expedition by not narrowing the information down (we want the browsing history of every customer for the last 5 years), you become a felon if you tell the EFF.
While now corrected (only under
Even if it's ruled unconstitutional... (Score:2)
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Re:Even if it's ruled unconstitutional... (Score:4, Insightful)
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But it does suggest that they won't be punished for going along with it, which is almost the same for practical purposes.
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You know that makes sense!
When it's just Lucas writing, he can't do a script that doesn't make the audience twinge a few times. Just like Bush can't deliver a speech without making the audience twinge.
Not unconstitutional on their face (Score:3, Insightful)
Secret warrants may be shady and sleazy, but they're perfectly in line with the 4th amendment. The 1st amendment also has security restrictions on it by court precedent, thus I think they'll have a hard time arguing that they have a first amendment right to tell their customers about a NSL.
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Re:Not unconstitutional on their face (Score:5, Insightful)
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At the very least I would demand that everyone that was wiretapped has the right to be informed about the wiretapping happening either after the prosecution ends or after a fixed period of time, whatever comes first (if you can't find anything incriminating about a person after a year of listening to his conversation, he probably does not do anything illegal).
This would keep those in power from frivulously using wiretapping against anyone without reason, just because someone had a hunch and he looked "suspi
Re:Not unconstitutional on their face (Score:4, Insightful)
Not being able to tell the subject of the investigation is one thing, but the gag order in the NSL mean that recipients can't even speak to anyone about the letters. The only people they can speak to are people necessary to enforce the letter, who then become bound by the gag, and lawyers, who are (I believe) exempt. It's one of the reasons why these are so hard to fight.
Unfortunately, these gag orders also make it difficult to get any sort of feel for how they are being abused. From internal investigations, it is known that many of these letters overstep the Law, as they lack any judicial approval in their requests for information. But as people can't speak out about them, determining the impact these have had is almost impossible.
Finally, I am not okay with the concept of our Law Enforcement Officers being 'shady and sleazy'; even if it's within the letter of the law. If instead of sending letters, the FBI were to pull people from the street, interrogate them, and then threaten with jail to and keep them from speaking about it, would that be okay?
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Surprise!!! (Score:5, Funny)
OT Canada/US? (Score:2)
This is only peripherally related, but I've been wondering about this lately.
The CIA isn't allowed to spy domestically right? I think the same holds true of CSIS in Canada. But nothing stops the CIA from spying on Canadians in Canada and the same would be true of CSIS.
Since Canada and the US cooperate on intelligence, what's to stop CSIS and the CIA from spying on each others citizens and sharing the information? That wouldn't technically break any laws.
Probably the NSA could even help CSIS, I remember in 2
Re:Only 97%? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Ah, but wouldn't it be more likely that the gag orders would be on the non-terrorism investigations - I mean, after all, you wouldn't want anyone to know you're investigating your political opponents, would you? But if you're investigating a real terrorist - well, who cares who knows about that. I mean, you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. And just because it doesn't have a gag order doesn't mean people will talk about it - if the ISP can tell that it's for a legit terrorism suspect, they're proba
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
you're forgetting that citizens of the USA have certain civil rights.
Domestic terrorism as you call it does not fall under the umbrella of "terrorism" legislation. It falls under regular law enforcement.
That's because they are US citizens. The article is about how the civil rights of citizens is being violated by the FBI, who know they aren't supposed to issue NSLs except under dire circumstances. The point is, the FBI has begun using NSLs in lieu of warrants because it just makes their job easier. It's
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This post is frighteningly wrong-headed.
All terrorism falls under regular law enforcement. There is no legal basis for this mysterious separation of "terrorist" from "criminal" that we see today. They're all criminals. The only time you treat people differently is when you're fighting a war against their country. Despite the modern name of the "War on Terror", such a name has no legal standing.
And then these civil rights you talk about do not happen because the people in question are US citizens. The Consti
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's really too bad that there isn't a *UN*-insightful moderation.
I don't think this is a troll, or flamebait. Just stupid and un-foresightful...or possibly totally lacking in a knowledge of history, and how government actions creep, and leadership changes.
Were it possible to have an ideally honest and upright government, AND to rely on it staying that way, then this proposal would be reasonable. To believe in that at this point appears willful blindness.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Accountability
And how do we hold government officials accountable?
In this day and age of terrorist activities, computer virus, electronic theft, etc..., the government (FBI, CIA, etc...) they do need to do their jobs and our Free Speech and our Privacy are both going to have to bend when our security depends on it.
Why? What if our liberties are more valuable than our security?
You can't have it all, and certainly for those out there who have NOTHING to hide, who don't perform any criminal ventures, I doubt t
There aren't. (Score:4, Informative)
There is a difference. These NSLs were not to individuals, they went to ISPs.
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