Back in 2004, Nicholas Merrill, who was then president of Calyx Internet Access, received a National Security Letter (NSL) from the FBI. These letters are notoriously authoritarian in that they come with a gag order that prevents the receiving party from even informing its customers it has received one.
Fortunately for us all, Nicholas Merrill refused to comply, and decided to fight the gag order in court. Eleven years later, his efforts have paid off, and we finally know just how awful these NSLs really are.
From ArsTechnica:
The National Security Letter (NSL) is a potent surveillance tool that allows the government to acquire a wide swath of private information—all without a warrant. Federal investigators issue tens of thousands of them each year to banks, ISPs, car dealers, insurance companies, doctors, and you name it. The letters don’t need a judge’s signature and come with a gag to the recipient, forbidding the disclosure of the NSL to the public or the target.
This is not what a free nation with appropriate due process looks like.
For the first time, as part of a First Amendment lawsuit, a federal judge ordered the release of what the FBI was seeking from a small ISP as part of an NSL. Among other things, the FBI was demanding a target’s complete Web browsing history, IP addresses of everyone a person has corresponded with, and records of all online purchases, according to a court document unveiled Monday. All that’s required is an agent’s signature denoting that the information is relevant to an investigation.
The FBI subsequently dropped demands for the information on one of Merrill’s customers, but he fought the gag order in what turned out to be an 11-year legal odyssey just to expose what the FBI was seeking. He declined to reveal the FBI’s target.
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