National Security Letters (NSLs)

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11 Articles
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New Disclosures Reflect NSLs’ Substantive First Amendment Flaws

This year has seen a remarkable string of disclosures about national security letters (NSLs), the secret demands the FBI sends to financial and communications service providers…
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Seven Myths Busted: FBI Surveillance and the NSL Expansion Vote in the Senate

Yesterday, the Senate failed to pass a motion to end debate and move to a final vote on a highly controversial amendment related to Internet records, which New America’s Open…
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Beware of the Emergency Exception Loophole in the Email Privacy Act

The Email Privacy Act, which passed the House 419-0, is slated for consideration in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week. The legislation updates the now 30-year old…
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Bye-Bye Birdie: reddit’s Warrant Canary Disappears

Sometimes, saying nothing says quite a lot. At the end of January 2015, the online bulletin board reddit issued a “transparency report” that informed its users, and the broader…
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FBI’s Push to “Fix a Typo” Would Really Expand Its Surveillance Authority

At last week’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Worldwide Threats, FBI Director James Comey reiterated his call for a major expansion of the FBI’s surveillance authorities,…
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National Security Letters and Leak Investigations

Journalists were reminded again last week of how little legal protection actually exists when the federal government decides to investigate national security leaks. In an ongoing…
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Lifting the Gag Order on One NSL is Good, But It’s Just a Start

Earlier this week, the public got a look at that rare occurrence in a national security case: a court lifting a gag on the recipient of a surveillance request. On August 28, Judge…
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Twitter’s First Amendment Suit & the Warrant-Canary Question

This week, Twitter lobbed the latest volley in what has been both a fascinating and encouraging repositioning of technology companies vis-à-vis the U.S. government—a pivot that…
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Bart Gellman’s NSL

Politico has published a short piece based on an interview with Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, who says  he’s been told that at some point his telephone records…
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Can We Do Without National Security Letters?

One of the more radical recommendations included in the report from President Obama’s Surveillance Review Group is the proposal to require judicial approval for National…
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OLC Memos and FOIA: Why the (b)(5) Exemption Matters

The headline of yesterday’s D.C. Circuit decision in Electronic Frontier Foundation v. Department of Justice, in which the Court of Appeals rejected a FOIA request for a…
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