7 ms·

It sounds like her concern is that they might show her a magic piece of paper which, once you've seen it, requires you to do certain things and prohibits you fr

• setra 10y ago
  They can email those to you.
  • ithkuil 10y ago
    if emailed, what prevents you from leaking it (along with other recent content of your email inbox) claiming somebody hacked your email ?
    • modoc 10y ago
      Fear of prison?
      • maze-le 10y ago
        You can get into prison because someone hacked your email account?
        • modoc 10y ago
          If they dig into it and decide that you did it yourself, as the parent suggested, then yes, you would have a serious risk of prison time for willfully violating the NSL.
        • PeterisP 10y ago
          Did someone hack your email account? You would expect such a claims to be severely scrutinied (including seizing all involved hardware for forensic analysis), and if you'd be making a false claim while having disseminated the information yourself, that would be a crime by itself in this scenario.
    • MacsHeadroom 10y ago
      More importantly, what prevents half a dozen email servers from leaking it all over the place? The notion that an NSL would be sent over internet postcard is laughable, whether or not it's true.
  • pfg 10y ago
    I don't think sending an email would legally count as a served subpoena, at least not unless you somehow (at the very least, but I doubt that's sufficient) indicated that you're fine with that? I'm not familiar with how this is practiced in the U.S., but in many EU countries, "regular" email is essentially useless in a court of law, even more so for something like a subpoena which needs to be served in person.
    • ryanlol 10y ago
      Email is definitely a valid way of serving subpoenas.
      • cmurf 10y ago
        No evidence of receipt. No witness.
        • ryanlol 10y ago
          And? Edit: Why the downvotes? cmurf certainly needs to elaborate as to why either of those would affect the validity of the thousands of subpoenas that have been served over email.
          • Bartweiss 10y ago
            They absolutely affect the validity if people claim non-receipt. Subpoenaing cooperative people is easy - you use mail, or email, or whatever you want and they acknowledge the thing and respond. That's why email is common. The question is how things go when someone doesn't feel like playing ball. With email and not-signed-for letters there's no reasonable way to prove that the person saw the content. "Spam probably ate it." "It must have gotten lost in the mail." And so on. So hand-served (and signed letter) subpoenas remain relevant for when people are dodging you. The fact that many people do respond to email subpoenas doesn't relate to whether non-respondents can be charged for their failure.
            • 10y ago
  • halomru 10y ago
    "I never received an email, your honor. I don't know what they are taking about. By the way, look at this cool statistic of how many emails get lost on their way from one mail server to the next"
• njloof 10y ago
  She does (still) have a canary: https://fyb.patternsinthevoid.net/canary.html https://fyb.patternsinthevoid.net/canary.html
  • beedogs 10y ago
    We won't know whether she still does for another four months.
  • nothrabannosir 10y ago
    Could an NSL require you to leave canaries in place?
    • praptak 10y ago
      The (untested) theory behind canaries is that they can forbid you from speaking the truth but they cannot order you to tell a lie. So you don't leave a canary in place, it just expires and you don't put up a new one.
      • mapt 10y ago
        You talk about warrant canaries being an untested legal theory; I say this is putting the cart before the horse. When were National Security Letters with gag orders prohibiting disclosure tested for constitutionality, in cases when the gag orders are violated and the government wants to punish somebody for disclosure?
    • forgotpwtomain 10y ago
      It's unlikely, at least there is no precedent that establishes the legality of compelled speech vs. the restriction of free speech.
    • Bartweiss 10y ago
      It's never been directly tested in court (not publicly, anyway). The idea is that you can be compelled not to speak about something, but not compelled to speak about it. Forced speech (especially dishonest speech) has never been endorsed by a court. Still, canaries are a bit complex. You obviously can't prove why one was taken down, because you can't speak about it. People floated the idea of using long "canary lists" of different things ("haven't received more than one request for user data", "haven't received more than two requests", etc), but there's suspicion that it wouldn't be legal because it would count as revealing specific facts (and you could perhaps be compelled to remove all of them at once). As is, they don't seem to have been rejected or broken, but they have to take the form of one-and-done notices that something happened.
• praptak 10y ago
  They would just serve the paper using the usual techniques for delivering legal papers to persons possibly unwilling to receive them. These techniques usually avoid identifying yourself upfront. I believe they rather want information which they cannot legally force her to divulge (otherwise see above), so they're trying their luck at intimidation.
  • DougHaber 10y ago
    That isn't always true. In the U.S. legal system, a person can be granted immunity, and in doing so have their 5th amendment protection against self-incrimination terminated. With that, they could be forced to provide testimony, and refusal could result in fines and jail time without due process for as long as the courts see fit.
    • algorias 10y ago
      I don't understand your "without due process" statement. Surely there is a process for granting someone immunity? Jail time does seem appropriate for non-compliance with a legally binding judicial order (I'm not endorsing or condemning the existence of these laws, btw)
      • DougHaber 10y ago
        In a sense, I think you are right and perhaps my bias is showing. From the perspective of a judge or prosecutor, they followed a legal process and gave a legal order, so there is no violation of due process in their eyes. Through the eyes of a person compelled to give testimony, we may reach a different conclusion. Consider a journalist who is granted immunity and asked to give up their source. They refuse and spend six months in jail, with few to no options to appeal for their freedom. This isn't theoretical. It happens occasionally. The definition of due process can vary from the common definition of fair treatment under the law, to the view more often taken by lawyers and governments that it just means following the process of the law as accepted by the courts and respecting legal rights. The reporter probably would feel as though they weren't treated fairly under the law, but the prosecutor would argue that they followed the law in full. I probably should not have used the phrase "without due process" in this case, since that will make it difficult to communicate with anyone holding views of the government or lawyers.
• ryanlol 10y ago
  That's certainly not a valid concern. There's much simpler ways of serving such a letter.
  • willvarfar 10y ago
    They serve you the letter personally, don't give you a copy, and then tell you verbally what they require you to do. NSLs don't leave a paper trail on the recipient's side.
    • ryanlol 10y ago
      Yes, and they could've just gone to her and done it. When the FBI served me with a subpoena they were waiting in the tube when I walked out of a plane. I'm sure they'd be capable of going even further to serve someone with a NSL.
      • MacsHeadroom 10y ago
        Well, good luck "just going to" her now that she's been tipped off.
        • ryanl0l 10y ago
          Based on my read of her blog post there was nothing stopping the FBI from doing just that while she was in the US. It'll definitely be very easy for them to do that if she ever wants to enter the US in the future.
          • MacsHeadroom 10y ago
            Presumably the "matter of national security" has a time limit. That said, Applebaum and Snowden have seemingly managed to get comfortable enough without returning to their country of birth.
            • ryanl0l 10y ago