FBI drops national security letters in face of lawsuits

By Michael Fraase

Wednesday, 14 May 2008 08:16PM CDT

Section: Privacy

National security lettersOne of the more disturbing tactics of the Bush administration’s methodical erosion of the US citizenry’s civil liberties is the use of national security letters, secret administrative orders demanding personal and behavioral information that are not subject to judicial approval. The FBI issues around 50,000 national security letters each year. Recipients of national security letters are forbidden from disclosing anything about the order, including its very existence.

Nice trick. The administration uses this tactic to obtain calling information, online usage patterns, and similar information from telephone companies and internet service providers.

Last November, the FBI served such an order on the Internet Archive in an attempt to obtain information about one of the archive’s patrons. But the Internet Archive used a provision of the reauthorized USA Patriot Act—a provision that exempts libraries—to challenge the order. More importantly, the Internet Archive also alleged that the disclosure restriction was unconstitutional.

The FBI, wanting no part of a potential ruling that would limit the disclosure restriction, dropped the gag order. Earlier this month the case documents were unsealed.

Melissa Goodman, an ACLU attorney, told the Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima that the FBI has similarly backed down whenever a national security letter has been challenged in court. “That calls into question how much the FBI needed the information in the first place, and finally, whether the FBI needs this kind of sweeping and unchecked surveillance power.”

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Conservatives support federal shield law

By Michael Fraase

Tuesday, 13 May 2008 08:12PM CDT

Section: Law

ConfidentialityIt’s plumb amazing that the United States doesn’t have a federal shield law even though 49 of the states have recognized some sort of confidentiality protection for journalists. All three remaining presidential candidates support it—although John McCain’s support is narrow because of concerns about, you guessed it, national security—but not President Bush.

Conservatives generally support the concept of protecting journalists’ confidential sources; last year the House of Representatives passed federal shield law legislation 398-21, co-authored by Representative Mike Pence (R-Indiana), one of the more conservative members. Pence told Eric Lichtblau and Philip Shenon of the New York Times that “the only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press,” and that protecting confidential sources “is not about protecting reporters; it’s about protecting the public’s right to know.”

Bush’s resistance is substantial: six cabinet-level officials have spoken out against the legislation, mostly citing national security concerns.

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Tech support as if it mattered

By Michael Fraase

Sunday, 11 May 2008 04:06PM CDT

Section: Business

ExpressionEngineTwo things about software: it all has bugs and it’s all more complicated than you think. Or at least than I think. Or something. Yesterday, at 5:45PM I received an email from the chief technology officer of the vendor of the software I use to run this website. He told me that someone had reported a security vulnerability to them (just the kind of message you want to get at the end of a long day).

Turns out the vulnerability had been resolved two major versions and three years ago but I hadn’t managed my updates properly and needed to fix a few things immediately.

Instead of treating me like a dumbass who rarely realizes he’s in way over his head, Derek merely made some suggestions. At 3:45PM on what I bet was a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Portland. Well, EllisLab principals are geographically dispersed, and I’m not sure where, exactly, he’s located, but I’ll bet there were any number of things he’d rather be doing than telling me my server has a security issue. Imagine my surprise when he didn’t even make fun of me for running his elegant software on a rickety old Windows enterprise server box that I’ve been trying to migrate to Ubuntu for more than a year. But now I’m thinking a Mac, but that’s a story for another day.

And just to top things off, he checked in again this morning—Sunday—to double-check my fixes.

So, hearty thanks, Derek. What a delightful surprise to find that on the verge of another tech bubble burst, there’s still great software and better people working on it.

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