Reform The PATRIOT Act: Stop Abuse of National Security Letters

[L. Coyote]

HANDY FORM to e-mail Congress = *~* Take Action *~*

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Reform The PATRIOT Act: Stop Abuse of National Security Letters
https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=429


With portions of the Patriot Act set to expire later this year, the time has come to tell Congress to begin reforming and repealing the worst excesses of the Bush Administration's "War on Terror."

Chief among the unconstitutional powers authorized by the Patriot Act are so-called national security letters (NSLs). These secret subpoenas allow the FBI, without any independent oversight or judicial review, to seize private data about ordinary Americans. Recipients of NSLs are forbidden, or "gagged," from ever revealing the letters' existence to their coworkers, to their friends or even to their family members. The FBI's systemic abuse of this power has been documented both by a Department Of Justice investigation and by EFF's Freedom of Information Act work.

Now, Congressmen Jerry Nadler and Jeff Flake have have introduced the National Security Letters Reform Act of 2009, which would curb the power's worst abuses. The bill would increase the standard of evidence required to send a letter, place a thirty-day time limit on the power's gag order, require the government to destroy inappropriately-obtained data, and provide targets with a clear path to challenge the letters' validity.

Send a message to your Representative now! Urge them to begin their reform of the Patriot Act by supporting the National Security Letters Reform Act.

For more info:

* Full bill text
* EFF summary of USA PATRIOT Act's changes to NSL authority
* Washington Post: FBI Found to Misuse Security Letters
* EFF Deeplinks: EFF Issues Report on Abuse of National Security Letter
* EFF Case: Internet Archive v. Mukasey

[L. Coyote]

1. ACLU: National Security Letters

National Security Letters
The National Security Letter provision of the Patriot Act radically expanded the FBI's authority to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies without prior court approval.

Through NSLs the FBI can compile vast dossiers about innocent people and obtain sensitive information such as the web sites a person visits, a list of e-mail addresses with which a person has corresponded, or even unmask the identity of a person who has posted anonymous speech on a political website. The provision also allows the FBI to forbid or "gag" anyone who receives an NSL from telling anyone about the record demand. Since the Patriot Act was authorized in 2001, further relaxing restrictions on the FBI's use of the power, the number of NSLs issued has seen an astronomical increase. The Justice Department's Inspector General has reported that between 2003 and 2006, the FBI issued nearly 200,000 NSLs. The inspector General has also found serious FBI abuses of the NSL power.

The ACLU has challenged this Patriot Act statute in court in three cases. The first, called Doe v. Holder, involves an NSL served on an Internet Service Provider. In September 2007 a federal court struck down the entirety of the National Security Letter (NSL) provisions of the Patriot Act. Judge Victor Marrero of the Southern District of New York ruled that the NSL statute's gag provisions violate the First Amendment and the principle of separation of powers. In December 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld this decision in part, finding the portions of the statute violated the First Amendment; specifically the sections that wrongly placed the burden on NSL recipients to challenge gag orders; narrowly limited judicial review of gag orders; and required courts to defer entirely to the executive branch. The appeals court also ruled that the government must now justify the more than four-year long gag on the "John Doe" NSL recipient in the case.

The second case, called Library Connection v. Gonzales, involved an NSL served on a consortium of libraries in Connecticut. In September 2006, a federal district court ruled that the gag on the librarians violated the First Amendment and the government ultimately withdrew both the gag and its demand for records.

The third case, called Internet Archive v. Mukasey, involved an NSL served on a digital library. In April 2008, the FBI withdrew the NSL and the gag a part of the settlement of a legal challenge brought by the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In addition, the ACLU has filed a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to learn more about the government's use of NSLs. ......... http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nationalsecurityletters/index.html

[Echo In Light]

2. Well then, K&R for Jerry Nadler and Jeff Flake