[Sessile G]

A federal court in California has ruled that a surveillance tool widely used by the FBI to obtain information on Americans without court oversight is unconstitutional because the gag order that accompanies it violates the First Amendment.

The ruling by Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California would bar the issuance of national security letters — a form of administrative subpoena — on constitutional grounds.
The ruling on the 1986 statute has been stayed while the government weighs an appeal.
NSLs allow the FBI to ask Internet companies and other electronic communication service providers to turn over subscriber information on American customers and to demand that the providers keep the fact of the letter secret — including from the target.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...ad2_story.html

[Pinball Wizard]

Gotta love those Democrat Federal Judges

(we got one around here...but, they try to impeach'em every 15 minutes)

[Skip]

Read this yesterday. This is HUGE, if it stands.

It will mean you can request surveillance records from your ISP or cellphone providers, and they must tell you if you're under surveillance, and probably by whom. But you still won't know why. So then you can contact the agency that issued the request and under the Freedom of Information act, they probably have to respond (eventually).

[Skip]

This court case was brought by a Telecoms company that didn't like having to enforce the gag order on its clients. The EFF (Electronics Frontier Foundation) helped bring this case in Federal Court since the plaintiffs were kept anonymous.

There is a 90-day stay in place to allow the gov't time to appeal this ruling. So the gag letters continue in the meantime.

I doubt the gov't will let this go. The FBI has gotten used to being able to do everything secretly. This has to end!

[Frogmann]

Good news .. thanks for posting it!