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Hi. I'm the reporter on this story. Thanks for discussing it! I thought it might be helpful for me to make a couple points. First, national security letters h
by jenvalentino 7y ago
Hi. I'm the reporter on this story. Thanks for discussing it!
I thought it might be helpful for me to make a couple points.
First, national security letters have been around, AND controversial, for years now. A number of tech companies have fought the gag orders. The news here is really that we are seeing for the first time which other specific companies get a lot of these — especially banks, credit agencies and so forth, which have all been silent on the subject.
Second, @hammock is correct to say that these are not approved by a judge. Nor are they grand jury subpoenas. They are administrative subpoenas, but unlike other administrative subpoenas, almost all of these come with stringent, long-term gag orders. So, they're a pretty special type of subpoena, not one with which everyone is familiar.
Thanks again for reading.
- Porthos9K 7y agoThis is an excellent and deeply disturbing article, but all I can do in response right now is suspect that if J. Edgar Hoover were still alive to see what shenanigans the modern FBI gets up to when nobody is looking, he would wholeheartedly approve. It's obvious that the agency has learned all the wrong lessons from the exposure of COINTELPRO. The FBI is still The House J. Edgar Built, and Congress ought to tear it down.
- chrischen 7y agoYou can't assume that Hoover would have been against increasing the power available to himself and his agency.
- Porthos9K 7y agoHe didn't seem to mind when he was actually running the FBI. So, assuming life-after-death isn't just a fantasy, why expect that he's changed his mind? People usually don't unless forced to do so.
- wallace_f 7y agoNo this is right. If left-, right-politics have taught me anything, it is that your personal business, emails, and bedroom behavior are the concern of the federal government and its electorate--at least the 50% that agree with it.
- Porthos9K 7y agoHoover was running his little fiefdom with minimal oversight under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Both sides used him, and doubtless both sides feared the dirt he had on them and what he might reveal if called to account by Congress. Kompromat might be a foreign word, but it's hardly a foreign concept.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bilbo0s 7y ago>Congress ought to tear it down. ABSCAM. There is a Lavrentiy Beria everywhere. (There's probably thousands of Lavrentiy Beria's in the US alone, truth be told.) With the threat of ABSCAM-like ops looming out there, I wouldn't count on politicians saving us. Just ask black and hispanic males how well appealing to politicians for help from malicious prosecution has worked out for them historically.
- Porthos9K 7y agoI get what you're saying, but do you really see HN management turning a blind eye to people calling for direct action against Federal agencies when a bunch of Ycombinator startups probably do business with the Feds? Besides, Big Brother is probably reading HN as well.
- mirimir 7y agoThanks for writing it. This is certainly disturbing news. And it's great to know about it. But I'm left feeling hopeless. Because we've been fighting this bullshit for decades, with little to show for it. And personally, there's nothing actionable. So it goes.
- cwkoss 7y agoMinor method of resistance: whenever you get a resume that lists work with the FBI, put it directly into the circular file.
- eatbitseveryday 7y agoYou realize people self-report their work history on their resume? I can omit something and it isn’t a liability for anyone.
- mirimir 7y agoLying on a resume may get you fired. Or so I've heard.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kaitai 7y agoOmitting a job is not lying on a resume -- it's very common to prune your jobs to respect a one-page limit, and the resume is supposed to present what is relevant and persuasive to the hiring manager.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoSo why not ask for the comprehensive job history on the job application? The federal government does.
- drewmol 7y agoFwiw, it was the PATRIOT Act, passed shortly after the events of 9/11/2001, that allows for these administrative subpoenas and gag orders and removed any effective judicial oversight. Many of those provisions in the act were set to expire and those expirations were extended by both president Bush and Obama. IIRC the AG or their subordinates have to notify the judiciary of these subpoenas but can issue a gag order along with the disclosure effectively removing any judicial oversight.
- chrischen 7y agoThe problem is anything that helps someone do their job more easily will get approved.
- jdc 7y agoA little more background on administrative subpoenas: We Don't Need No Stinking Warrant: The Disturbing, Unchecked Rise of the Administrative Subpoena (https://www.wired.com/2012/08/administrative-subpoenas https://www.wired.com/2012/08/administrative-subpoenas)
- SlowRobotAhead 7y agoDidn’t Biden take credit for writing the patriot act? Seems like a strange thing to congratulate yourself for.
- stjohnswarts 7y agoThe Patriot Act has done far more damage to our democracy than 9/11 did. It's actually quite sad. It can't be considered Ironic because any idiot can see it's an arrow into the heart of a healthy democracy that is leery of government overreach.
- clubm8 7y agoHi reporter on this story: Are we aware if these are targeted (~60 orders = ~60 targets) or requests for large swathes of information?
- jenvalentino 7y agoHi. We don't know for sure how many targets are involved in these letters. However, the USA Freedom Act prohibited bulk collection of information here. The government now releases basic statistics on NSLs, for example here: https://www.dni.gov/files/CLPT/documents/2019_ASTR_for_CY2018.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/CLPT/documents/2019_ASTR_for_CY201.... In 2018, there were 10,235 NSLs, with 38,872 "requests for information" (ie targets) within those NSLs. So you can make some general inferences.
- cwkoss 7y agoDo you know if anyone has ever responded to one of these letters with "If you want to access our data we need a signed order from a judge" and how that played out?
- erikpukinskis 7y agoAccording to the EFF: Can I challenge an NSL in court? Yes. Since the statute was amended in 2006, an NSL recipient can petition a federal district court to modify or set aside both requests for records and the gag orders that accompany such requests. There’s a good summary of the EFF’s challenges to the law here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/disappointing-ruling-national-security-letters-not-last-word https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/disappointing-ruling-n...
- ryacko 7y agoAs a suggestion for following articles on the subject, you could explore why there is no remedy for this apparent loss of privacy. I personally think that the Bill of Rights should have been amended once tabulating machines were used for the 1890 census, without which, it would have taken the whole decade to count.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoIt wouldn’t take a whole decade to count. Just hire more people. A census’s cost is proportionate to the population.
- ryacko 7y agoAmdahl’s Law is real.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoIt's trivially parallelizable.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- RonaldSchleifer 7y agoThank you for your reporting on this, even if it just seems to chronicle the ever accelerating deconstruction of the Constitution. Even if American Constitutionalists were able to walk back these types of clear abuses on the social compact that keeps peace by two steps, it will only be without realizing that five steps were taken towards the progress of disassembling the Constitution. An old, irrelevant, outdated document the Constitution is, they tell you as part of the psychological manipulation game they play to get people to foolishly abdicate their most fundamental rights through the con job of government's benevolence. But in the end, well beyond the point of way-too-late, people will unfortunately have to come to terms with the reality that freedom, liberty, self-governance, and that the government is no one's friend are not old, irrelevant, and outdated principles; they are universal principles that span time. Just like many things in humanity have been discovered and crated, then forgotten and taken for granted and driven to being lost and collapsed, and then rediscovered or reinvented; so too, does it seem humanity is on course to bury this experiment with self-governance that was kicked off in 1775, for maybe another 1,000 years, if not permanently. Is there even an opportunity or chance for freedom to rise again when it is suppressed so thoroughly by way of technology and soulless robots and AI? I think not. I hope I am for once wrong. ... War or galvanizing event to rationalize ever more eradication of liberty, incoming, all to the cheers of adoring fans. In memoriam the people who's voices have been squelched by the tech tyrants. They will not be the last victims of this evil that is descending on us with ominous persistence.
- guelo 7y agoNot sure what you're talking about, the courts have ruled that NSLs are constitutional.
- mirimir 7y agoThat's the problem. I'm almost 100% sure that, if you explained an NSL to Jefferson, he'd say that it clearly wasn't constitutional. Washington too, very likely. Adams, though, might have gone either way.
- simplecomplex 7y ago
- hammock 7y agoAs @mLuby says below, recipients of NSLs "can't reveal they've been gagged, or what type of data they were compelled to reveal." Has evidence from an NSL ever been introduced into court by a prosecutor? It seems like this gag order serves to allow the FBI to pursue parallel construction and then keep their tracks covered in doing so.