Court sides with ACLU, strikes down Patriot Act gag provision

Court sides with ACLU, strikes down Patriot Act gag provision

rawstory.com

A federal appeals court today upheld, in part, a decision striking down provisions of the Patriot Act that prevent national security letter (NSL) recipients from speaking out about the secret records demands. The decision comes in an American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging the FBI's authority to use NSLs to demand sensitive and private customer records from Internet Service Providers and then forbid them from discussing the requests.

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The Patriot Act!

Siding with the ACLU, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the statute's gag provisions violate the First Amendment.

Also:

Bills aimed at bringing the NSL authority back in line with the Constitution were introduced last year in both the House and Senate after reports had confirmed and detailed the widespread abuse of the authority by federal law enforcement. Since the Patriot Act was passed in 2001, relaxing restrictions on the FBI's use of the power, the number of NSLs issued has seen an astronomical increase, to nearly 200,000 between 2003 and 2006. A March 2008 Office of Inspector General (OIG) report revealed that, among other abuses, the FBI misused NSLs to sidestep the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). In one instance, the FBI issued NSLs to obtain information after the FISC twice refused its requests on First Amendment grounds. The OIG also found that the FBI continues to impose gag orders on about 97 percent of NSL recipients and that, in some cases, the FBI failed to sufficiently justify why the gag orders were imposed in the first place.

Anyone ever heard that Robert Plant song "Little by Little?"

Well maybe little by little the courts will carve away at the piece of horse manure that the Patriot Act is, always was, and always will be.

The concerned voiced their caution way back when that the potential for abuse was high, but fell on deaf, dismissing ears. And true to form, the FBI and CIA took those new found powers and abused the hell out of them. False home break ins, false arrests, and false detainment, with no recourse whatsoever to the accused. Clearly not what our forefathers envisioned.

This particular clause in the Patriot Act that has been stricken was always something incomprehensible to me that in the US of A could be allowed to happen, even in the face of 911. While it is good that the courts have stricken this provision, they've still got a long way to go to get rid of that vile act forever.

rawstory.com
(visit the link for the full news article)