Judge orders Google to turn over customer data to FBI

[tangent4ronpaul]

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/06/01/judge-orders-google-to-give-customer-data-to-fbi/

A federal judge has ruled that Google Inc. must comply with the FBI's warrantless demands for customer data, rejecting the company's argument that the government's practice of issuing so-called national security letters to telecommunication companies, Internet service providers, banks and others was unconstitutional and unnecessary.

FBI counter-terrorism agents began issuing the secret letters, which don't require a judge's approval, after Congress passed the USA Patriot Act in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The letters are used to collect unlimited kinds of sensitive, private information, such as financial and phone records and have prompted complaints of government privacy violations in the name of national security. Many of Google's services, including its dominant search engine and the popular Gmail application, have become daily habits for millions of people.

In a ruling written May 20 and obtained Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston ordered Google to comply with the FBI's demands.

But she put her ruling on hold until the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could decide the matter. Until then, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company must comply with the letters unless it shows the FBI didn't follow proper procedures in making its demands for customer data in the 19 letters Google is challenging, she said.

After receiving sworn statements from two top-ranking FBI officials, Illston said she was satisfied that 17 of the 19 letters were issued properly. She wanted more information on two other letters.

It was unclear from the judge's ruling what type of information the government sought to obtain with the letters. It was also unclear who the government was targeting.

The decision from the San Francisco-based Illston comes several months after she ruled in a separate case brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation over the letters. She ruled in March that the FBI's demand that recipients refrain from telling anyone — including customers — that they had received the letters was a violation of free speech rights.

Kurt Opsah, an attorney with the foundation, said it could be many more months before the appeals court rules on the constitutionality of the letters in the Google case.

"We are disappointed that the same judge who declared these letters unconstitutional is now requiring compliance with them," Opsah said on Friday.

Illston's May 20 order omits any mention of Google or that the proceedings have been closed to the public. But the judge said "the petitioner" was involved in a similar case filed on April 22 in New York federal court.

Public records show that on that same day, the federal government filed a "petition to enforce National Security Letter" against Google after the company declined to cooperate with government demands.

Google can still appeal Illston's decision. The company declined comment Friday.

In 2007, the Justice Department's inspector general found widespread violations in the FBI's use of the letters, including demands without proper authorization and information obtained in non-emergency circumstances. The FBI has tightened oversight of the system.

The FBI made 16,511 national security letter requests for information regarding 7,201 people in 2011, the latest data available.

-t

[Warlord]

http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/DM-Resize/photos.demandstudios.com/getty/article/52/214/dv1396036.jpg?w=600&h=600&keep_ratio=1

SCREW THE FBI...

Hopefully they appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. However no doubt the fascist Scalia will find a way to rule against them and for the FBI.

Time for Google to take the hint: put servers offshore and encrypt everything.

But they wont. They will comply like the good little statists they are.

[tangent4ronpaul]

I don't think MEGA has that much server space...

-t

[GunnyFreedom]

This lady appears to have the reading comprehension of a turnip, and I think she got her law degree out of a crackerjack box.

[Warlord]

I don't think MEGA has that much server space...

-t

They dont need that fat bastard. Google has enormous resources and can take steps to protect their users data if they so wish.

But they won't because they're fascists.

[tangent4ronpaul]

Hay, they fought it! That's more than most companies would do.

They may appeal it.

-t

[TruckinMike]

SCREW THE FBI...

Hopefully they appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. However no doubt the fascist Scalia will find a way to rule against them and for the FBI.

Time for Google to take the hint: put servers offshore and encrypt everything.

But they wont. They will comply like the good little statists they are.

He'll use his favorite word again, "Reasonable", as he crouches down and licks the hands of his masters.


They dont need that fat bastard. Google has enormous resources and can take steps to protect their users data if they so wish.

But they won't because they're fascists.

yes, and in the past they have, without question, helped the fedgov in violating Americans rights. I'm almost to the point that I believe that this whole thing is a charade to make us feel that there is a little justice and that we really can trust the system to do the right thing... :rolleyes:

[GunnyFreedom]

Hay, they fought it! That's more than most companies would do.They may appeal it.-tThis. I agree with this. And their argument was even the correct argument. That's kind of a big deal. Usually even if they fight it they use the wrong argument. My issue is with the San Francisco Nanny-State tyrant Judge who seems to have the reading comprehension of a two year old. I want to rep you, but I'm on my mobile and apparently loading a new forum skin where I can't find it.

[MoneyWhereMyMouthIs2]

Hay, they fought it! That's more than most companies would do.

They may appeal it.

-t


I suspect it's theater. Google has a long record of not being respectful of customer privacy concerns. If you fight a case in a crappy manner and lose, you're doing more harm than good.

[Philhelm]

This lady appears to have the reading comprehension of a turnip, and I think she got her law degree out of a crackerjack box.

I once worked for an attorney whose undergraduate degree was in fashion design. I know my degree is worthless, but damn, at least it was academic.

One attorney had believed that senators were always elected by a general vote and was dumbfounded when he realized that there was a Constitutional Amendment for that. I don't expect attorneys to know every law, or even the majority of the law, but I would have thought something like that would have been basic enough. I guess not.

[brushfire]

"dont be google"

[Anti Federalist]

They dont need that fat bastard. Google has enormous resources and can take steps to protect their users data if they so wish.

But they won't because they're fascists.

Warlord hits a home run.

Anti Federalist is pleased.

[HOLLYWOOD]

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?416150-Federal-judge-ignores-constitution&highlight=Susan+Illston

Incredible... Closed to the public. (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?416150-Federal-judge-ignores-constitution&highlight=Susan+Illston) CNET has learned that U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco rejected Google's request to modify (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57577958-38/google-fights-fbis-warrantless-data-requests-in-federal-court/) or throw out 19 so-called National Security Letters...

The litigation taking place behind closed doors in Illston's courtroom -- a closed-to-the-public hearing was held on May 10 -- could set new ground rules curbing the FBI's warrantless access to information that Internet and other companies hold on behalf of their users. The FBI issued 192,499 of the demands from 2003 to 2006, and 97 percent of NSLs include a mandatory gag order


Now that contradicts what Judge Susan Illson ruled a couple of months earlier... Obviously, someone got to Judge Illson... either TPTB dug up some skeletons on Illson or she was promised a move up the Pyramid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Illston

Below, March 2013 ruling
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...onstitutional/ (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/nsl-found-unconstitutional/)
Federal Judge Finds National Security Letters Unconstitutional, Bans Them



By Kim Zetter (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/author/kimzetter/)
03.15.13


http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2013/03/susan-illston.jpg (http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2013/03/susan-illston.jpg)
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston.
Photo: Jason Doiy

Ultra-secret national security letters that come with a gag order on the recipient are an unconstitutional impingement on free speech, a federal judge in California ruled in a decision released Friday.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered the government to stop issuing so-called NSLs across the board, in a stunning defeat for the Obama administration’s surveillance practices. She also ordered the government to cease enforcing the gag provision in any other cases. However, she stayed her order for 90 days to give the government a chance to appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We are very pleased that the Court recognized the fatal constitutional shortcomings of the NSL statute,” said Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed a challenge to NSLs on behalf of an unknown telecom that received an NSL in 2011. “The government’s gags have truncated the public debate on these controversial surveillance tools. Our client looks forward to the day when it can publicly discuss its experience.”
The telecommunications company received the ultra-secret demand letter in 2011 from the FBI seeking information about a customer or customers. The company took the extraordinary and rare step of challenging the underlying authority of the National Security Letter, as well as the legitimacy of the gag order that came with it.
Both challenges are allowed under a federal law that governs NSLs, a power greatly expanded under the Patriot Act that allows the government to get detailed information on Americans’ finances and communications without oversight from a judge. The FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs over the years and has been reprimanded for abusing them — though almost none of the requests have been challenged by the recipients.
After the telecom challenged the NSL, the Justice Department took its own extraordinary measure and sued the company (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/07/doj-sues-telecom-over-nsl/), arguing in court documents that the company was violating the law by challenging its authority.
The move stunned EFF at the time.

“It’s a huge deal to say you are in violation of federal law having to do with a national security investigation,” Zimmerman told Wired last year. “That is extraordinarily aggressive from my standpoint. They’re saying you are violating the law by challenging our authority here.”
The case is a significant challenge to the government and its efforts to obtain documents in a manner that the EFF says violates the First Amendment rights of free speech and association.
In her ruling, Judge Illston agreed with EFF, saying that the NSL nondisclosure provisions “significantly infringe on speech regarding controversial government powers.”
She noted that the telecom had been “adamant about its desire to speak publicly about the fact that it received the NSL at issue to further inform the ongoing public debate” on the government’s use of the letters.
She also said that the review process for challenging an order violated the separation of powers. Because the gag order provisions cannot be separated from the rest of the statute, Illston ruled that the entire statute was unconstitutional.
Illston found that although the government made a strong argument for prohibiting the recipients of NSLs from disclosing to the target of an investigation or the public the specific information being sought by an NSL, the government did not provide compelling argument that the mere fact of disclosing that an NSL was received harmed national security interests.
A blanket prohibition on disclosure, she found, was overly broad and “creates too large a danger that speech is being unnecessarily restricted.” She noted that 97 percent of the more than 200,000 NSLs that have been issued by the government were issued with nondisclosure orders.
Number of NSLs Issued by FBI


2003
39,346


2004
56,507


2005
47,221


2006
49,425


2007
16,804


2008
24,744


2009
14,788


2010
24,287


2011
16,511



(Source: DoJ reports)
She also noted that since the gag order on NSL’s is indefinite — unless a recipient files a petition with the court asking it to modify or set aside the nondisclosure order — it amount to a “permanent ban on speech absent the rare recipient who has the resources and motivation to hire counsel and affirmatively seek review by a district court.”
It’s only the second time that such a serious and fundamental challenge to NSLs has arisen. The first occurred around an NSL that was sent in 2005 to Library Connection, a consolidated back office system for several libraries in Connecticut. The gag order was challenged and found to be unconstitutional because it was a blanket order and was automatic. As a result of that case, the government revised the statute to allow recipients to challenge the gag order. Illston found that unconstitutional as well in her ruling this week because of restrictions around how they could challenge the NSL.
In 2004, another case also challenged a separate aspect of the NSL. This one involved a small ISP owner named Nicholas Merrill (http://wired_threatlevel.contextly.com/redirect/?id=O1tqSioU19&click=inbody), who challenged an NSL seeking info on an organization that was using his network. He asserted that customer records were constitutionally protected information.
But that issue never got a chance to play out in court before the government dropped its demand for documents.
With this new case, civil libertarians are getting a second opportunity to fight NSLs head-on in court.
NSLs are written demands from the FBI that compel internet service providers, credit companies, financial institutions and others to hand over confidential records about their customers, such as subscriber information, phone numbers and e-mail addresses, websites visited and more.
NSLs are a powerful tool because they do not require court approval, and they come with a built-in gag order, preventing recipients from disclosing to anyone that they have even received an NSL. An FBI agent looking into a possible anti-terrorism case can self-issue an NSL to a credit bureau, ISP or phone company with only the sign-off of the Special Agent in Charge of their office. The FBI has to merely assert that the information is “relevant” to an investigation into international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.
The lack of court oversight raises the possibility for extensive abuse of NSLs under the cover of secrecy, which the gag order only exacerbates. In 2007 a Justice Department Inspector General audit found that the FBI had indeed abused its authority and misused NSLs on many occasions. After 9/11, for example, the FBI paid multimillion-dollar contracts to AT&T and Verizon requiring the companies to station employees inside the FBI (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/fbi-att-verizon-violated-wiretapping-laws/) and to give these employees access to the telecom databases so they could immediately service FBI requests for telephone records. The IG found that the employees let FBI agents illegally look at customer records without paperwork and even wrote NSLs for the FBI.
Before Merrill filed his challenge to NSLs in 2004, ISPs and other companies that wanted to challenge NSLs had to file suit in secret in court – a burden that many were unwilling or unable to assume. But after he challenged the one he received, a court found that the never-ending, hard-to-challenge gag orders were unconstitutional, leading Congress to amend the law to allow recipients to challenge NSLs more easily as well as gag orders.
Now companies can simply notify the FBI in writing that they oppose the gag order, leaving the burden on the FBI to prove in court that disclosure of an NSL would harm a national security case. The case also led to changes in Justice Department procedures. Since Feb. 2009, NSLs must include express notification to recipients that they have a right to challenge the built-in gag order that prevents them from disclosing to anyone that the government is seeking customer records.
Few recipients, however, have ever used this right to challenge the letters or gag orders.
The FBI has sent out nearly 300,000 NSLs since 2000, about 50,000 of which have been sent out since the new policy for challenging NSL gag orders went into effect. Last year alone, the FBI sent out 16,511 NSLs requesting information pertaining to 7,201 U.S. persons, a technical term that includes citizens and legal aliens.
But in a 2010 letter (http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/05/letter_to_patrick_leahy_2010.12.09.pdf) (.pdf) from Attorney General Eric Holder to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), Holder said that there had “been only four challenges,” and those involved challenges to the gag order, not to the fundamental legality of NSLs. At least one other challenge was filed earlier this year (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/mystery-nsl/) in a secret case revealed by Wired. But the party in that case challenged only the gag order, not the underlying authority of the NSL.
When recipients have challenged NSLs, the proceedings have occurred mostly in secret, with court documents either sealed or redacted heavily to cover the name of the recipient and other identifying details about the case.

The latest case is remarkable then for a number of reasons, among them the fact that a telecom challenged the NSL in the first place, and that EFF got the government to agree to release some of the documents to the public, though the telecom was not identified in them. The Wall Street Journal, however, used details left in the court records, and narrowed the likely plaintiffs down to one, a small San-Francisco-based telecom named Credo. The company’s CEO, Michael Kieschnick, didn’t confirm or deny that his company is the unidentified recipient of the NSL, but did release a statement following Illston’s ruling.
“This ruling is the most significant court victory for our constitutional rights since the dark day when George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act,” Kieschnick said. “This decision is notable for its clarity and depth. From this day forward, the U.S. government’s unconstitutional practice of using National Security Letters to obtain private information without court oversight and its denial of the First Amendment rights of National Security Letter recipients have finally been stopped by our courts.”
The case began sometime in 2011, when Credo or another telecom received the NSL from the FBI.

EFF filed a challenge on behalf of the telecom (http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/07/EFF-NSL-challenge.pdf) (.pdf) in May that year on First Amendment grounds, asserting first that the gag order amounted to unconstitutional prior restraint and, second, that the NSL statute itself “violates the anonymous speech and associational rights of Americans” by forcing companies to hand over data about their customers.
Instead of responding directly to that challenge and filing a motion to compel compliance in the way the Justice Department has responded to past challenges, government attorneys instead filed a lawsuit against the telecom, arguing that by refusing to comply with the NSL and hand over the information it was requesting, the telecom was violating the law, since it was “interfer[ing] with the United States’ vindication of its sovereign interests in law enforcement, counterintelligence, and protecting national security.”
They did this, even though courts have allowed recipients who challenge an NSL to withhold government-requested data until the court compels them to hand it over. The Justice Department argued in its lawsuit that recipients cannot use their legal right to challenge an individual NSL to contest the fundamental NSL law itself.
After heated negotiations with EFF, the Justice Department agreed to stay the civil suit and let the telecom’s challenge play out in court. The Justice Department subsequently filed a motion to compel in the challenge case, but has never dropped the civil suit.

The redacted documents don’t indicate the exact information the government was seeking from the telecom, and EFF won’t disclose the details. But by way of general explanation, Zimmerman said that the NSL statute allows the government to compel an ISP or web site to hand over information about someone who posted anonymously to a message board or to compel a phone company to hand over “calling circle” information, that is, information about who has communicated with someone by phone.
An FBI agent could give a telecom a name or a phone number, for example, and ask for the numbers and identities of anyone who has communicated with that person. “They’re asking for association information – who do you hang out with, who do you communicate with, [in order] to get information about previously unknown people.
“That’s the fatal flaw with this [law],” Zimmerman told Wired last year. “Once the FBI is able to do this snooping, to find out who Americans are communicating with and associating with, there’s no remedy that makes them whole after the fact. So there needs to be some process in place so the court has the ability ahead of time to step in [on behalf of Americans].”



(http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?416150-Federal-judge-ignores-constitution&highlight=Susan+Illston)

[GunnyFreedom]

I suspect it's theater. Google has a long record of not being respectful of customer privacy concerns. If you fight a case in a crappy manner and lose, you're doing more harm than good.

Theater or not, they used the right argument. We can use that in what we do.

Warlord is right, that doesn't stop them from being fascists. They could offshore their data and HQ in a heartbeat and drop the wall like Ft Knox if they wanted to. Wouldn't even take that much of an effort for a company like that. There would be a process of physically securing the server-farms that would take some time, but if they were serious about it they could do it. I don't want Google to be a hero, my optimism is that Google's lawyers made the correct argument. That is rare. That we can use to our advantage. The argument becomes a lot less 'fringe' because they used the correct argument, for all I know (or even care) they made it by accident, or the lawyer himself is sympathetic. As much as a lack of victory matters in the real world of online privacy, it doesn't matter in market of ideas, the argument itself gains credibility.

"But a judge rulled against it"

A judge that's been making very conflicting and possibly irrational judgements lately, which is why it was automatically appealed by the agency of the judge herself (*IIRC).

So we bring the Constitutional argument and turn America against it. It could well land in SCOTUS. If we get America on our side and then SCOTUS rules badly, then they de-legitimize themselves. We can immediately start calling them Plessy v Ferguson and raise up all kinds of people up in moral indignation and anger to put the bums out and change the way business is done..

[GunnyFreedom]

I once worked for an attorney whose undergraduate degree was in fashion design. I know my degree is worthless, but damn, at least it was academic.

One attorney had believed that senators were always elected by a general vote and was dumbfounded when he realized that there was a Constitutional Amendment for that. I don't expect attorneys to know every law, or even the majority of the law, but I would have thought something like that would have been basic enough. I guess not.

Most legislators (State and Federal) have never read their Constitution, and have only the vaguest idea what is in it.

[jclay2]

Does anyone really think that Eric Schmidt doesn't work in complete compliance with the government in almost all of google's major product development?

[Philhelm]

Most legislators (State and Federal) have never read their Constitution, and have only the vaguest idea what is in it.

That honestly does not surprise me. What's sad, other than the obvious, is that the U.S. Constitution is one of the shortest legal documents in existence.