US Feds And Information From ISP's

Published: Friday, June 03, 2005 Online-Casinos.com

CONTROVERSIAL ACTS

US feds and information from Internet Service Providers

Causing something of a ruckus on several Internet sites this week was the question of US Federal Government access to sensitive information typically held by Internet Service Providers (ISP's)

Apparently the federal government is trying to preserve the authority to send National Security Letters to ISPs in order to obtain records from them without the legal niceties of obtaining a subpoena.

It seems this authority was first granted by legislation in 1986, and then expanded by the Patriot Act.

Last year a US District Court judge ruled that the provision was unconstitutional, as it did not allow challenges and prohibited those companies who recieved a National Security Letter from revealing that they had. A further objection raised by the ACLU is that the statute does not inform readers that citizens or companies that receive a NSL can challenge it. It is claimed that this is illustrated by the fact that in 20 years noone has filed a challenge.

In what is referred to as "....a stunning case of circular reasoning," the federal Administration has claimed that the District Court ruling was incorrect because people could challenge NSLs, as the case itself proved. This is interpreted to mean that the judge's ruling should be thrown out because the case was successfully brought to Court to begin with.

Due to the secrecy requirements surrounding the NSL issue, ACLU initially had to file the suit under seal, and then had to negotiate in order to get permission to make any kind of public statement about the case.

According to one article, some of the material was only declassified months after the decision, and material that was previously withheld included the phrase "national security" and the sentence "I am a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." from an agent's statement.