GOOGLE is the first major company to openly challenge FBI’s warrantless data-gathering known as national security letters, which authorize a gag order ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge.
The company asked U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco last week to grant a “petition to set aside legal process” in response to a national security letter it received from the FBI.
National security letters allow FBI officials to send a secret request to Web and telecommunications companies requesting “name, address, length of service,” and other information about users as long as it’s relevant to a national security investigation. No court approval is required, and disclosing the existence of the FBI’s request is not permitted.
Because of the secrecy requirements, documents in the San Francisco case are almost entirely under seal. Petitions “filed under Section 3511 of Title 18 to set aside legal process issued under Section 2709 of Title 18 must be filed under seal because Section 2709 prohibits disclosure of the legal process.
The new legal challenge comes a month after Google became the first company to disclose summary statistics about the NSLs it received from the FBI. Google effectively put the FBI on notice at the time by saying its interpretation of the law means agents may not use an NSL to “obtain anything else from Google, such as Gmail content, search queries, YouTube videos or user IP addresses.”
The FBI seems to use NSLs more broadly than that: the NSL sent to GOOGLE asked for “electronic communication transactional records,” a phrase that would sweep in IP addresses and e-mail and Web browsing logs.
While the FBI’s authority to levy NSL demands predates the Patriot Act, it was the 2001 law that dramatically expanded NSLs by broadening their use beyond espionage-related investigations. The Patriot Act also authorized FBI officials across the country, instead of only in Washington, D.C., to send NSLs.
When Nicholas Merrill, who ran an Internet provider, challenged the gag order as unconstitutional, a federal judge in New York ruled the secrecy orders were an “unconstitutional prior restraint of speech in violation of the First Amendment,” prompting Congress to rewrite portions of the law. The Internet Archive subsequently fended off an FBI NSL request for “any electronic communication transactional records” with the help of the ACLU and EFF.
A 2007 report by the Justice Department’s inspector general found “serious misuse” of NSLs, and FBI director Robert Mueller pledged stricter internal controls. Mueller has called the investigative technique invaluable. It’s a “proven and useful investigative tool,” he said at the time.
An inspector general’s report found that the FBI made 50,000 NSL requests in 2006, which provides only a partial glimpse of how the data-gathering power is used: one NSL could request a large collection of documents, for instance.
It is unimaginable to most law-abiding citizens how much power has been given to the FBI to snoop into everyone’s business apparently without need to show any court that it is necessary for “National Security”.
Watch out! YOU MAY BE NEXT!
Thanks to Declan McCullagh and CNet, and
Thanks for “listening”.
Howard
The Neu Facebook
It’s amazing to me we are mired in protracted debates about non-sequiturs, and this issue has garnered, until this comment, no responses. How do laws like this get passed? How do we permit these blatant violations of rights to continue?
While the Fourth Amendment specifically addresses “the right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects,” it has been well established that a person stepping outside their house enjoys no such protections. But, with the 14th Amendment, corporations were given the same types of legal protections that individuals enjoy; in fact, if I’m not terribly mistaken, that was the basis of the railroad tax issue in the 1880’s and the Citizens United ruling in 2010 (was it 2010 or 2009?). Either way, what we have here is a wholesale cherry-picking of constitutional liberties by our government, all in the name of “national security”. Think of Google as a house we are invited to visit. I have my issues with Google, but my issue with the FBI is far greater.
I’m sure if you are one of those who believe that watching rhino mating rituals on the savanna may lead to an invasion of foreign nationals motivated by depraved sexual behavior, then perhaps the sweeping and overbroad reach of the so-called “National Security Letters” has merit.
I am not one of those people. We are continually, as a nation, we Americans, bemoaning the inefficiency and intrusion of government. We then go about our lives, acting as if the deep core of these rights issues is far removed from our daily lives. This story should open a few eyes and get people to ask serious questions; somehow, I don’t think that will actually happen.
Suffice to say, I believe everyone should pay more attention, be better informed, be more activist and give a damn about what happens to the next guy, lest it happen to you, too.
Enjoy your rhino porn, while you can. I hear those things get pretty horny.