Liberty Maven

Finally, we get a little something resembling justice.  The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling striking down a Patriot Act provision that forbids a recipient of a National Security Letters (NSL) to tell anyone that they’ve been served with one.

Title 18, Section 2709(c) reads:

… no wire or electronic communications service provider, or officer, employee, or agent thereof, shall disclose to any person (other than those to whom such disclosure is necessary to comply with the request or an attorney to obtain legal advice or legal assistance with respect to the request) that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained access to information or records under this section.

This provision was ruled “unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment because it authorized ‘coercive searches effectively immune from any judicial process, and that the nondisclosure requirement of subsection 2709(c) was unconstitutional under the First Amendment because it was an unjustified prior restraint and a content-based restriction on speech.”

Read more about this at examiner.com and The Michigan Messenger.