FBI snooping tactic ruled unconstitutional
US: A US judge has ordered the FBI to stop its “pervasive” use
of National Security letters to snoop on phone and email records, ruling
Friday that the widespread tactic was unconstitutional.
The order issued by US District Court Judge Susan Illston in San
Francisco came as a blow to a measure heavily used by the administration
of President Barack Obama in the name of battling terrorism.
The Patriot Act passed after the September 11 attacks gave the
Federal Bureau of Investigation strong authority to order that people’s
telecom records be handed over, without such requests having to be
disclosed.
But in her ruling, Illston said evidence indicated that tens of
thousands of NSLs are sent out every year, and that 97 percent of them
are fettered with the provision that recipients never mention the
requests.
“This pervasive use of nondisclosure orders, coupled with the
government’s failure to demonstrate that a blanket prohibition on
recipients’ ability to disclose the mere fact of receipt of an NSL is
necessary to serve the compelling need of national security, creates too
large a danger that speech is being unnecessarily restricted,” Illston
said in her written decision.
Illston set her ban on NSLs to take effect in 90 days to allow US
lawyers to appeal the decision given “the significant constitutional and
national security issues at stake.” The judge’s ruling came in a lawsuit
filed in 2011 by Internet rights law group Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF) on behalf of an unnamed telecom company.
“We are very pleased that the court recognized the fatal
constitutional shortcomings of the NSL statute,” said EFF Senior Staff
Attorney Matt Zimmerman.
“The government’s gags have truncated the public debate on these
controversial surveillance tools.” It was the potential for gag orders
accompanying NSLs to violate the First Amendment right of free speech
that prompted the ruling, according to Zimmerman.
NSLs are used to get companies to secretly turn over private
information such as websites visited, phone records, email addresses,
and financial data. Google early this month made the unusual move of
adding NSLs to its tranparency report about requests by governments for
data about users of the Internet giant’s various online products and
services.
But Google said it was only allowed to provide broad ranges of
numbers: in the years from 2009 to 2012, for example, it received
between zero and 999 requests.
The requests affected between 1,000 and 1,999 accounts, except in
2010, when the range was 2,000 to 2,999 accounts.
“You’ll notice that we’re reporting numerical ranges rather than
exact numbers,” said a blog post from Google law enforcement and
information security director Richard Salgado. “This is to address
concerns raised by the FBI, Justice Department and other agencies that
releasing exact numbers might reveal information about investigations.”
The numbers, while inexact, were believed to be the first data from a
private company about the requests, criticized by civil liberties groups
for giving the government too much power to conduct surveillance without
a warrant.
The EFF calls the letters “dangerous” and has challenged the
authority, along with the American Civil Liberties Union.
Google’s actions are “an unprecedented win for transparency,” EFF’s
Dan Auerbach and Eva Galperin said at the time. Despite a lack of exact
data, “Google has helped to at least shed some limited light on the ways
in which the US government uses these secretive demands for data about
users,” they added in a blog post. “While we continue to be in the dark
about the full extent of how the law is being applied, this new data
allays fears that NSLs are being used for sweeping access to large
numbers of user accounts -- at Google, at least.” The EFF said public
records have documented the FBI’s “systemic abuse” of the power.
AFP |