http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/us/politics/scope-of-national-security-inquiry-is-revealed.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Scope of National Security Inquiry Is Revealed
Nicholas Merrill in 2011. On Monday, he revealed the amount of information the F.B.I. requested from his company, Calyx Internet Access, about one customer in 2004. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times After a decade of court battles, the Internet entrepreneur who filed the first legal challenge to a type of secret administrative order known as a national security letter revealed on Monday the breadth of an F.B.I. demand <http://isp.yale.edu/sites/default/files/page-attachments/merrill_v._lynch_-_unredacted_attachment_to_2004_nsl.pdf> in 2004 for information about a customer. National security letters, which empower federal investigators to seek certain customer records without court approval or oversight, were significantly expanded as part of the U.S.A. Patriot Act <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/usa_patriot_act/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In August, a judge ruled that the entrepreneur, Nicholas Merrill, could disclose what he had been asked to turn over if the government did not file an appeal within 90 days, and the deadline has now passed. Mr. Merrill revealed that the F.B.I. <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_bureau_of_investigation/index.html?inline=nyt-org> in 2004 ordered his company, Calyx Internet Access, to turn over all physical mail addresses, email addresses and Internet Protocol addresses associated with one customer’s account, as well as telephone and billing records and anything else considered to be an “electronic communications transactional record.” The order said the content of communications between the customer and others should not be handed over. The bureau also sought the account’s “radius log,” which a related court opinion <http://isp.yale.edu/sites/default/files/page-attachments/merrill_v._lynch_-_unredacted_decision_vacating_gag_order.pdf> said could include “cell-tower-based phone tracking information.” But the Justice Department told the court, the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, that the F.B.I. no longer obtained such data with national security letters. After Mr. Merrill received the F.B.I. order in 2004, he began a court challenge assisted by the American Civil Liberties Union <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/american_civil_liberties_union/index.html?inline=nyt-org>. The litigation proceeded under seal for years because the government contended that it could keep everything about national security letters, including who had been served with one, a secret. Mr. Merrill argued that this gag rule infringed on his First Amendment rights. In the meantime, national security letters have become more publicly controversial as the F.B.I.’s use of the tool has increased significantly. In 2007 and 2008, the Justice Department’s inspector general found numerous problems with how the bureau was using and keeping records about the letters. In 2010, Mr. Merrill won a ruling permitting him to identify himself as having received such a letter, but the rest of the gag order remained in place. In 2014, Mr. Merrill opened a new court challenge to win the right to talk about the order he had received, this time assisted by the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School <http://isp.yale.edu/node/6037>. __._,_.___ ------------------------------ Posted by: "Beowulf" <[email protected]> ------------------------------ Visit Your Group <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/grendelreport/info;_ylc=X3oDMTJmb2JqYmhjBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzIwMTk0ODA2BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTMyMzY2NwRzZWMDdnRsBHNsawN2Z2hwBHN0aW1lAzE0NDg5OTQxNjM-> - New Members <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/grendelreport/members/all;_ylc=X3oDMTJnODhsYTF2BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzIwMTk0ODA2BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTMyMzY2NwRzZWMDdnRsBHNsawN2bWJycwRzdGltZQMxNDQ4OTk0MTYz> 1 [image: Yahoo! Groups] <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo;_ylc=X3oDMTJldWlycGp0BF9TAzk3NDc2NTkwBGdycElkAzIwMTk0ODA2BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTMyMzY2NwRzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNnZnAEc3RpbWUDMTQ0ODk5NDE2NA--> • Privacy <https://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/groups/details.html> • Unsubscribe <[email protected]?subject=Unsubscribe> • Terms of Use <https://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/terms/> __,_._,___ -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
