On Thursday, a federal court struck down the National Security Letter provision of the Patriot Act. The provision allows the government to serve a warrant and prevents the party who received the warrant for telling anyone that they recieved the warrant or what was divulged. In the related case, the plantiff was an Internet Service Provider who, presumably, couldn’t tell it’s customers that it had divulged information about them. Oddly enough, the case’s title is John Doe vs (former Attorney General) Alberto Gonzalez. Why? Well, the ISP also can’t be named because of the National Security Letter.
The ACLU, who represented John Doe, has a pretty thorough press release on the ruling and about the case in general. The press release makes an interesting point about how anyone who is served with a NSL is then under a gag order to not talk about it and essentially can’t criticize it. From the release:
In its case, the ACLU and the NYCLU said that the gag provision has had significant effects on the John Doe plaintiff. John Doe was prevented from participating in the contentious Patriot Act reauthorization debate that raged across the nation in late 2005 and early 2006. Even though Doe had firsthand knowledge of this sweeping FBI power, he could not speak about the fact that he had received an NSL, divulge the breadth of the letter, or discuss the ramifications on his business relationships.
But here’s the part of the press release that blew me away. You would think that something like this isn’t used that widely. That, is definitely not the case. In the last two years the government has issued… wait for it… over 143,000 NSLs. That’s one NSL for every 2000 Americans in just 2 years.
While reports previously indicated a hundred-fold increase to 30,000 NSLs issued annually, an extraordinary March 2007 report from the Justice Department’s own Inspector General puts the actual number at over 143,000 NSLs issued between 2003 and 2005. The same investigation also found serious FBI abuses of the NSL power and numerous potential violations of the law.
Anyways, I’m so glad I renewed my membership to the ACLU last week.