A Disappointing Ruling on National Security Letters, but Not the Last Word | Hacker News Reader

A Disappointing Ruling on National Security Letters, but Not the Last Word

eff.org

86 pointsDiabloD316 comments

This ruling is unfortunately another example of how our courts and our system of checks of balances has totally failed. The idea that the FBI can eliminate your 1st Amendment rights by issuing you a letter flies in the face of everything that a free society is based on.

I'm curious why the technology industry in the only one pushing back on this? This must be affecting other industries too. Or are we just the only ones who give a shit?

The total lack of push-back from the banking/finance sector is what I find interesting, they have no shortage of lawyers. I get the impression that nobody ever expected them to not be totally submissive to gov requests.

I would assume it comes into contact with it more..? The technology industry is behind telecom infrastructure, consumer facing communications, etc; all of which seem like better targets than banks or the financial industry.

Or maybe the banks don't get harassed in the same way as everybody else does given the total financialization of government and modern American life.

afaik no one ever went public announcing and publishing NSL right as he got it. I could only google one case of someone publishing 11 year old redacted letter after spending years in court.

Going public first and waiting for FBI move would be a better test of 1st amendment than complaining FBI keeps sending those and people get intimidated into submission.

>afaik no one ever went public announcing and publishing NSL right as he got it.

Because going public is a federal crime punishable by many years in federal prison under 18 U.S.C. § 2709 and the Patriot Act section 505.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2709

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-107hr3162enr/pdf/BILLS-1...

Kudos to whoever has the balls to sit in solitary confinement in federal prison for years or decades while the kangaroo courts here in the USA consider and reject their pleas for justice.

https://twitter.com/AlexanderAbdo/status/723181432424652800

Wait, did I miss something? Did Congress successfully amend the Constitution? Because if something was unconstitutional before, how did it become conditionally just by a law being passed?

The Constitution consists of the original document, the amendments, and over two centuries of legal interpretation of said documents.

Subtract said legal interpretation, and you get absolute non-sense.

Constitutionality has been something argued by judges and lawyers before the ink had time to dry.

Why don't more people just ignore the gag orders? I would. I understand most people won't, but there certainly should be more than one guy who illegally revealed his NSL in the 15 years or so since they began.

Because people have things to lose, and because the justice system doesn't always work as expected. Being proverbially gagged by the federal government violates everything I believe in America, but that revulsion doesn't necessarily mean that I'm willing to do significant prison time to object to.

There are people that are that brave, and their actions are indeed commendable, but many people have jobs, families, friends and social status that they'd probably like to keep intact moreso than their instinct to "stick up for what's right".

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