[wired] Unknown Tech Company Defies FBI In Mystery Surveillance Case

[bbrewer]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/mystery-nsl/


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Unknown Tech Company Defies FBI In Mystery Surveillance Case

"Sometime earlier this year, a provider of communication services in the
United States  perhaps a phone company, perhaps Twitter  got a letter
from the FBI demanding it turn over information on one, or possibly even
hundreds, of its customers. The letter instructed the company to never
disclose the existence of the demand to anyone  in particular, the
target of the investigation.

This sort of letter is not uncommon post-9/11 and with the passage of
the U.S. Patriot Act, which gave the FBI increased authority to issue
so-called National Security Letters (NSLs). In 2010, the FBI sent more
than 24,000 NSLs to ISPs and other companies, seeking information on
more than 14,000 individuals in the U.S.

The public heard about none of these letters.

But this time, the company that received the request pushed back. It
told the agency that it wanted to tell its customer that he or she was
being targeted, which would give the customer a chance to fight the
request in court, as a group of Twitter users did last year when the
Justice Department sought their records under a different kind of
request. The minor defiance in this latest case was enough to land the
NSL request in a federal court docket last Friday, where the government
filed a request for a court order to force the company to adhere to the
gag order."

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