Vatic Note: I wondered why the zionist bankers were in such a damn big hurry all of a sudden! Now I see why, everything is going into the Thomas C. Crapper for them. This is only one example, not including all the other things going badly. The shooting in Boulder is now being seen as an inside job, false flag to push through gun control and its backfiring....
Then there are the rebels in Syria that have been outted as CIA, MI6 and Mossad, so there can be no invasion there based on the "so called Rebels". I wonder if that is why Israel tried to assassinate Hillary? Did she screw up? I think I am going to quit calling Israel "Israel" and instead call it what it truly is..... "Khazar land". I think that would make a huge difference. Watch for the changes and I think we should all give the real Jews a break and call Israel "Khazar land" starting right now. Another suggestion I saw was "Israhell".
Justice Department Sues Telecom for Challenging National Security Letter
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/07/doj-sues-telecom-over-nsl/- July 18, 2012
Last year, when a telecommunications company received an ultra-secret demand letter from the FBI seeking information about a customer or customers, the telecom took an extraordinary step — it challenged the underlying authority of the FBI’s 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 and been reprimanded for abusing them — though almost none of the requests have been challenged by the recipients.
After the telecom challenged its NSL last year, the Justice Department took its own extraordinary measure: It sued the company, arguing in court documents that the company was violating the law by challenging its authority.
That’s a pretty intense charge, according to Matt Zimmerman, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing the anonymous telecom.
“It’s a huge deal to say you are in violation of federal law having to do with a national security investigation,” says Zimmerman. “That is extraordinarily aggressive from my standpoint. They’re saying you are violating the law by challenging our authority here.”
The government’s “Jabberwocky” argument – accusing the company of violating the law when it was actually complying with the law – appears in redacted court documents that were released on Wednesday by EFF with the government’s approval. Prior to their release, the organization provided them to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the case Tuesday night. 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.
It’s only the second time that such a serious and fundamental challenge to NSLs has arisen. The first occurred in 2004 in the case of a small ISP owner named Nicholas Merrill, 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 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 (.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 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. The organization provided them to the Wall Street Journal, before releasing them on its web site, with the name of the telecom and other details redacted. The Journal, however, using details left in the court records, 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.
The case began sometime in 2011, when Credo or another telecom received an NSL from the FBI.
EFF filed a challenge on behalf of the telecom (.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.
“It was eye-opening to us that they followed that approach,” Zimmerman says.
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.
“So there’s still this live complaint that they have refused to drop saying that our client was in violation of the law,” Zimmerman says, “presumably in the event that they lose, or something goes bad with the [challenge case].”
Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle declined to comment on the case.
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 says. “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].”
It remains to be seen, however, whether that issue will finally get its day in court.
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
3 comments:
You asked for suggestions on what to call the Israeli regime. I call it the Israeli regime.
Most people have difficulty distinguishing a country from a state from the people of that country or state. According to a poll a few years ago, over 80% of the American people have a favorable view of the Chinese people, but about 25% have a favorable view of the Chinese government. There's no surprise there, but get this: 56% have a favorable view of "China." I noticed that that figure is almost precisely between the other two figures, indicating (to me) a confusion in people's minds.
The term "Israel" is confusing in the same way. By using the term "Israeli regime," you draw a line of separation between the regime and the people it rules. More importantly, you draw a clear distinction between the regime on one hand, and the Jews and the ancient Biblical kingdom on the other.
That would work for those with fine tuned senses of the delicate, but it doesn't work with those who miss the point. Calling Israel "Israel Regime" will mean the same to those who do not have such sensibilities. Heck even I would have missed it.
I think calling it what it is, is better.... Remember Israel belongs to the REAL JEWS at the RIGHT TIME, when the savior comes to gather them all up. AND ONLY THEN. GOD WARNED THEM NOT TO TAKE THE LAND BY FORCE.
Since they did not do that, it was the pagans, calling themselves Jews, who did it. The Zionists are not religiou in the sense of Judaism, rather, they are religious in the sense of satanism. I say lets call Israel "Khazar Stolen Land" and I am willing to compromise and take out the stolen, even thought its true.
Come on, join me on this one AAR, its seldom I ask, so do you think you could accommodate an old friend, an old fighting friend against these evil ones???
I didn't say, "Israel regime;" I said, "Israeli regime."
To most people, "regime" suggests a government, the legitimacy of which is called into question. Even readers who don't examine the words still respond to them.
Calling it "Khazar stolen land," presents more problems than "Zionist-held territory." You have to explain and defend too much to get your point across.
I'll look for some term that drives home the point that the rulers of Palestine are not Jews, and that even the most casual glance at the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus would make it obvious.
Just as you know Christians by their love, you know real Jews by their obedience to Mosaic Law.
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