Google Files First Amendment Challenge Against FISA Gag Order 163
The Washington Post reports that Google has filed a motion challenging the gag orders preventing it from disclosing information about the data requests it receives from government agencies. The motion cites the free speech protections of the First Amendment. "FISA court data requests typically are known only to small numbers of a company’s employees. Discussing the requests openly, either within or beyond the walls of an involved company, can violate federal law." From the filing (PDF): "On June 6, 2013, The Guardian newspaper published a story mischaracterizing the scope and nature of Google's receipt of and compliance with foreign intelligence surveillance requests. ... In light of the intense public interest generated by The Guardian's and Post's erroneous articles, and others that have followed them, Google seeks to increase its transparency with users and the public regarding its receipt of national security requests, if any. ... Google's reputation and business has been harmed by the false or misleading reports in the media, and Google's users are concerned by the allegation. Google must respond to such claims with more than generalities. ... In particular, Google seeks a declaratory judgment that Google as a right under the First Amendment to publish ... two aggregate unclassified numbers: (1) the total number of FISA requests it receives, if any; and (2) the total number of users or accounts encompassed within such requests."
Uhm Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck with that. If they don't get blown out of the first Federal Court who hears it, we may have an actual chance to hear what the Government is actually requesting, not the sanitized and approved verbiage that has been coming out. Somewhere between what Snowden has been saying and the Government is allowing people to comment on, the truth may be found.
The Patriot Act needs to go and so does this secret court bullshit where information is handed over on a whim, not on a true judicial review.
Can we trust anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't look like anyone trusts what the government is saying about their FISA requests. Does anyone trust what Google says any better?
Re:What would happen if they defied the order? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, what would the government do if Google just went ahead and released the information?
Uh...put people in Jail for breaking the law? There is no legal defense--so unless you want to move to China, you beg for permission to speak.
Re:Uhm Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
They will get blown out of the first court. Thats the norm.
But it hardly matters, because sooner or later it reaches the Supreme Court, and there is this little matter of the Constitution involved.
Every company with a web presences should grow a pair and join this suit.
Reasonable safeguards can be put in place (delays, or reviews in an open court by a REAL judge that actually attended law school),
but telling someone they can never reveal something is just plain wrong.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
To what purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
These days it seems to be more of a political move for the purposes of avoiding oversight and preventing the authorities from being charged with illegal, or at least immoral and unethical, activities.
Re:why not just publish them? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what happens when your government can't be bothered to follow its own laws.
Know what else happens? People stop respecting the law, look what happened during Prohibition.
Re:Uhm Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
They're only asking to be allowed to release counts, not the content of the requests.
So they're only asking to release metadata, which according to Mr. Clapper isn't a type of data [youtube.com], so I don't see why the gov't would reject this.
Re:Can we trust anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Treason (Score:5, Insightful)
Legal Meta-games (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey gang, we really might be morphing into "Web 3.0" in whichever of many things that means.
We're starting to enter the age of the Law Meta-Game.
Google does their fair share of morally complex things, but they haven't been called "stupid" very often.
So *because it's Google* and not some two-guys-and-a-garage operation, they're not so easy to shove in a corner. Even at the rate that lawyer fees rise, if some "typical" (as the cynics would say) "travesty of justice" occurred, that then becomes a hell of a Meta-Game news article.
"Google: We wanted to report on secret govt data requests. Govt said no."
You/they don't file motions like that "out of boredom on a Tuesday". They have the money to submit the motion and all the bells and whistles. So this might be the first of many kinds of steps it takes to slowly begin to roll back the Big Brother Engine. Not a lot, but they're helping to drag it into the sunlight where such scampery things don't like to be.
Re:Legal Meta-games (Score:5, Insightful)
Well the reasons for them doing it are simple: Self Preservation. If you had your E-Mail, Social Contacts/Pictures etc. in a system that was regularly tapped by the NSA and the FBI, then you might think twice about using those services. Google's freely available services that you can use but while you're using them, we'll mine every piece of information out of you that we can. They're a commercial NSA and when the real NSA steps on their toes, possibly driving users away that's not good for business. Facebook and Microsoft have the same problem, hell all free cloud based services have a problem now with this "215" section of the law. Yes, Google is an 800lb Gorilla and so is Microsoft, well 650lb now and Facebook, meh, 400lb. If they start pushing on those idiots like Feinbitch who as chairwomen of the Senate Intelligence Committee (boy there's an oxymoron for you) stating that the NSA has access to your phone conversations, when they want. If they start pushing on DC and getting all the masses lined up, maybe things will change. The EFF and ACLU have some pretty sharp lawyers as well and they haven't had much luck in cracking all of the intrusions into our privacy and the secrecy of why the government needs this information. Feinstein and others with her mentality in DC are the reason we have this mess to begin with, now the feign ignorance and shock or coyishly say "well it has thwarted terrorism." Funding comes from congress, there is no way in hell that She and members of her committee didn't have direct knowledge of what was going on, much less every member of the House and Senate for the past decade. They've written the laws that allow the secrecy and the pulling of information without warrants and because of that and the nature of the legal process in this country, lower courts bar cases from moving forward on "National Security" reasons. This is an affront to the 4th amendment yet alone the 1st amendment as Google is claiming. Like I said, good luck because those Federal Judges have to look at the law as written and do you think that stooge Holder isn't going to appeal his way up to the Supreme Court if an "activist" judge somehow rules against the Government?
Also anybody out here should remember back in 2007 there was an uproar because of the warrantless wiretapping going on. What happened then? Well the cases dragged on and then congress gave the telecomms immunity in a new piece of legislation.
Oh and the only case that is still moving forward since 2007 (it is 2013 now after all) is being held up by the Justice Department and that retard Clapper..
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=190892480 [npr.org]
James Clapper, director of national intelligence, personally urged U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White to throw out the remaining lawsuit. Clapper wrote the judge in September that the government risks "exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States" if forced to fight the lawsuit.
That case has EFF lawyers behind it, think they'll be successful?
So the constitution and out privacy violated in the names of National Security. Shit, Woz hit it on the mark the other day.
http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/06/apple-inc-aapl-co-founder-steve-wozniak-rethinks-america/ [valuewalk.com]
In Wozniak’s view, the Patriot Act started things going downhill, and he said there isn’t even “a free open court anymore.” He compared the U.S. government to a king who rounds up people and kills them or puts them in prison. He said when reading the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, he doesn’t see how the things that are happening now are actually allowed to happen.
He also compared the U.S. to Russia. He said that when he was growing up, the Russian government would follow people around, s
Re:Uhm Yeah (Score:2, Insightful)
I just wish Snowden would clarify what the hell he's saying. I've read Q & A with him and I still can't work out exactly what people are looking at, how they're getting it, whether the looking has to be actively initiated or is passive, or anything else. We need more damned details, not more hyperbole. I'm by no means diminishing the value of his bringing PRISM to light, even if it turns out to be a much lesser problem than he seems to believe, but I don't really give a shit whether he believes it's the greatest assault on privacy in history, I want to know exactly what's been happening so I can decide whether I believe that it is or not. For a man whose goal was supposedly the open discussion of this thing, he's doing a pretty piss poor job of initiating one.