{"id":14940,"date":"2015-12-01T16:43:56","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T21:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14940"},"modified":"2015-12-01T16:43:56","modified_gmt":"2015-12-01T21:43:56","slug":"11-years-later-we-finally-know-whats-in-a-national-security-letter-its-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14940","title":{"rendered":"11 Years Later, We Finally Know What\u2019s in a National Security Letter (It\u2019s Bad)"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"post-header \">\n<h3 class=\"post-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/libertyblitzkrieg.com\/2015\/12\/01\/11-years-later-we-finally-know-whats-in-a-national-security-letter-its-bad\/#more-29295\" target=\"_blank\">11 Years Later, We Finally Know What\u2019s in a National Security Letter (It\u2019s Bad)<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"clearfix post-meta post-meta-top\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-29300\" src=\"http:\/\/libertyblitzkrieg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Screen-Shot-2015-12-01-at-1.20.03-PM.jpg\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2015-12-01 at 1.20.03 PM\" width=\"253\" height=\"223\" \/><\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"post-content\">\n<p>Back in 2004,\u00a0Nicholas Merrill,\u00a0who was then president of Calyx Internet Access, received a National Security Letter (NSL) from the FBI. These letters are notoriously authoritarian\u00a0in that they come with a gag order that prevents the receiving party from even informing its customers it has received one.<\/p>\n<p>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\u00a0know just how awful these NSLs really are.<\/p>\n<p>From\u00a0<em>ArsTechnica<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><em>The National Security Letter (NSL) is a potent surveillance tool that allows the government to acquire a wide swath of private information\u2014all 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\u2019t need a judge\u2019s signature and come with a gag to the recipient, forbidding the disclosure of the NSL to the public or the target.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This is not what a free nation with appropriate due process looks like.<\/p>\n<p><em>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.\u00a0<strong>Among other things, the FBI was demanding a target\u2019s complete Web browsing history, IP addresses of everyone a person has corresponded with, and records of all online purchases, according to a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/isp.yale.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/page-attachments\/merrill_v._lynch_-_unredacted_attachment_to_2004_nsl.pdf\">court document<\/a>\u00a0unveiled Monday.<\/strong>\u00a0All that\u2019s required is an agent\u2019s signature denoting that\u00a0the information is relevant to an investigation.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The FBI subsequently dropped demands for the information on one of Merrill\u2019s customers, but he fought the gag order in\u00a0<strong>what turned out to be an 11-year legal odyssey just to expose what the FBI was seeking.<\/strong>\u00a0He declined to reveal the FBI\u2019s target.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>11 Years Later, We Finally Know What\u2019s in a National Security Letter (It\u2019s Bad) Back in 2004,\u00a0Nicholas Merrill,\u00a0who was then president of Calyx Internet Access, received a National Security Letter (NSL) from the FBI. These letters are notoriously authoritarian\u00a0in that they come with a gag order that prevents the receiving party from even informing its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[301,10887,4285,6174,10884,10885,10886,765],"class_list":["post-14940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-fbi","tag-isp","tag-liberty-blitzkrieg","tag-michael-krieger","tag-national-security-letter","tag-nicholas-merrill","tag-nsl","tag-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14941,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14940\/revisions\/14941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}