Big Brother Tries to Muscle ISPs

Found on Wired on Monday, 30 May 2005
Browse Censorship

The Bush administration asked a federal appeals court Friday to restore its ability to compel Internet service providers to turn over information about their customers or subscribers as part of its fight against terrorism.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero of New York last year blocked the government from conducting secret searches of communications records, saying the law that authorized them wrongly barred legal challenges and imposed a gag order on affected businesses.

The administration said the judge's ruling was off the mark because the company did mount a legal challenge to the demand for records. "Yet in this very case, the recipient of the national security letter did precisely what the NSLs supposedly prevent recipients from doing," the filing said.

But ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer said the law does not contain a provision to challenge the FBI's demand for documents. The ACLU and the firm filed the lawsuit to challenge the law's constitutionality on the grounds that it doesn't contain such a provision, he said.

The Patriot Act shouldn't be renewed anyway. Until today there hasn't been much of the expected success. I'd like to see an list of terrorists that have been captured using this act.