FBI ’secret subpoenas’
p2pnet.net News:- “When you hear US president George W. Bush condemning ‘tourists’, he means ‘terrorists’,” p2pnet posted on May 31.
“It may be a joke in some places. But it’s no laughing matter for Americans and those around the world who are linked to the US, whether they like it or not. Their privacy and other rights are being relentlessly carved away as the Bush/Cheney administration uses the threat of terrorism to impose measures it wouldn’t normally be able to even mention out loud.”
We were talking about the FBI’s "National Security Letters" used by agents to demand detailed information about people’s private Net communications from ISPs, web mail providers and other communications service providers.
A federal district court has already found NSLs, as they’re known, unconstitutional, but not only is the Bush administration appealing the case, it wants NSLs expanded so the FBI can demand documents from companies without a judge’s approval.
But the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), Center for Constitutional Rights, Center for Democracy and Technology, the Online Policy Group, Salon Media Group, Six Apart, the US Internet Industry Association and ZipLip have filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing NSLs are unconstitutional.
“NSLs are secret subpoenas for communications logs, issued directly by the FBI without any judicial oversight,” says an EFF statement.
“ These secret subpoenas allow the FBI to demand that online service providers produce records of where their customers go on the Web, as well as what they read and with whom they exchange email. The FBI can even issue NSLs for information about people who haven’t committed any crimes.”
In its brief to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, EFF argues these secret subpoenas “imperil free speech by allowing the FBI to track people’s online activities.
“In addition, NSLs violate the First and Fourth Amendment rights of the service providers who receive the secret government demands. EFF and its cosigners argue that NSLs for Internet logs should be subject to the same strict judicial scrutiny applied to other subpoenas that may reveal information about the identities of anonymous speakers – or their private reading habits and personal associations.
“Yet NSLs are practically immune to judicial review. They are accompanied by gag orders that allow no exception for talking to lawyers and provide no effective opportunity for the recipients to challenge them in court. This secret subpoena authority, which was expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act, could be applied to nearly any online service provider for practically any type of record, without a court ever knowing.”
The US Constitution doesn’t allow the FBI to secretly demand logs about Internet users’ Web browsing and email history based on vague claims of national security, said EFF attorney Kevin Bankston points out. "The district court’s decision that National Security Letters are unconstitutional should have been a wake-up call to the House of Representatives, which just voted to renew the PATRIOT Act without adding new checks against abuse," he says
Such protections are lacking in the PATRIOT renewal bill the House of Representatives recently passed, but they’re included in the Senate bill, says the EFF, adding:
“It is not yet clear whether those protections will be included in the final bill when it reaches the President’s desk.”
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
p2pnet posted – ISP confidentiality under attack, p2pnet, May 31, 2005
EFF – FBI’s "National Security Letters" Threaten Online Speech and Privacy, August 4, 2005
August 5th, 2005 at 1:59 pm
This voilation of the forth amendment of the U.S. Constitution can be fixed (as far as computer communications is concerned) by instituting FreeWan. In the meantime, look at the Freenet project and other project such as I2P. FreeWan will hopefully grow to be a worldwide network of homebrew infrastructure. one of the main goals of FreeWan is to develop a network that is free from corporate and governemnt intrusion. Since all infrastructure will be set up by the users, users will hopefully learn how to secure their computers in the process of building the network. It goes back to the concept that freedom and personal responsibility go hand in hand. We have elarned that to depend on the governemnt and big business is to invite tyranny.
Depending on the U.S. government to protect our freedoms is like depending on the fox to guard the henhouse against predators. The Republican-Democratic party consists of traitors at the higher levels as far as I am concerned. The only “representative” that actually does his duty to uphold the constitution is Ron Paul of Texas.