{"id":18,"date":"2007-03-27T10:46:55","date_gmt":"2007-03-27T15:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kim.thewei.com\/20070327\/my-national-security-letter-gag-order\/"},"modified":"2013-12-13T08:15:35","modified_gmt":"2013-12-13T13:15:35","slug":"my-national-security-letter-gag-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/my-national-security-letter-gag-order\/","title":{"rendered":"My National Security Letter Gag Order"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/03\/22\/AR2007032201882.html\">Article<\/a> published in the Washington Post 2007 03 23<\/p>\n<p><em>It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made . . . The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author&#8217;s attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Justice Department&#8217;s inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue &#8220;national security letters.&#8221; It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision &#8212; demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval &#8212; to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.<\/p>\n<p>Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information.<\/p>\n<p>I found it particularly difficult to be silent about my concerns while Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005 and early 2006. If I hadn&#8217;t been under a gag order, I would have contacted members of Congress to discuss my experiences and to advocate changes in the law . . .  Congress lacked a complete picture of the problem during a critical time . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Article published in the Washington Post 2007 03 23 It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made . . . The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author&#8217;s attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents. &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/my-national-security-letter-gag-order\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;My National Security Letter Gag Order&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-life","category-government-trade","category-privacy-rights"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4637,"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/4637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}