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Appeals Court: Patriot Act Gag Order Unconstitutional

By Ed Brayton

pThe 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling striking down a Patriot Act provision that forbid recipients of National Security Letters (NSLs) requiring them to turn over records to the FBI from revealing anything about the request to anyone. The case, brought by the ACLU on behalf of an internet service provider (ISP) who was served with such a letter, was called iDoe v Mukasey/i. The full ruling can be read a href="http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/safefree/doevmukasey_decision.pdf"here/a./p pThe ISP was served with an NSL by the FBI in February, 2004, requiring them to turn over all records for one of their customers, including the content of emails sent and received. The letter also informed the ISP that the Patriot Act "prohibit[ed] any officer, employee or agent" of the company from "disclosing to any person that the FBI has sought or obtained access to information or records" pursuant to the NSL provisions.br / /p a href="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/12/appeals_court_patriot_act_gag.php"Read the rest of this post.../a | a href="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/12/appeals_court_patriot_act_gag.php#commentsArea"Read the comments on this post.../aimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/scienceblogs/dispatches/~4/489693890" height="1" width="1"/

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on December 19, 2008 (boomark / email).