A TIME OF VIGILANCE
Hentoff, Nat
Ashcroft Watch Nat Hentoff A Time of Vigilance In the months ahead, .the appellate courts —and ultimately the Supreme Court—will be tested concerning the most promising federal district court...
...Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the ACLU, which brought the case of Doe and ACLU vs...
...A gag order accompanies every National Security Letter...
...Jaffer has also pointed out on NPR: "The FBI could use the provision to effectively obtain a political organization's membership list, like the NAACP or the ACLU [and could] obtain the names of people with whom a journalist has communicated over the Internet...
...Section 215 of the Patriot Act—involving libraries, bookstores, and many other holders of data—could also fall...
...Ashcroft, detailed for me the effect of Judge Marrero's ruling: "The provision we challenged that he struck down allows the FBI to issue NSLs against wire or electronic service providers...
...On September 29, New York Federal District Judge Victor Marrero struck down as unconstitutional Section 505 of the Patriot Act, which greatly expanded the government's use of National Security Letters to get a wide range of personal information...
...And much of the Patriot Act, along with executive orders and parts of the Patriot Act II, still festers despite Judge Marrero's decision...
...He is the author of "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance...
...Ashcroft Watch Nat Hentoff A Time of Vigilance In the months ahead, .the appellate courts —and ultimately the Supreme Court—will be tested concerning the most promising federal district court decision yet regarding the Patriot Act, sections of which come up for renewal or removal by Congress next December...
...The gag rule is a prior restraint on speech, and the absence of any judicial supervision or subsequent challenge in court through the gag rule turns the Fourth Amendment upside down...
...But that's not all...
...As Jaffer points out, if Marrero's decision is upheld by the higher courts, it could "apply with equal force" to two other National Security Letter provisions—allowing the FBI to get information from financial institutions, including banks and credit card companies...
...Said Jaffer to the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal paper: "If they used it that much in fourteen months, who knows how much they've used it since...
...As Judge Marrero noted, "The FBI could also use an NSL to discern the identity of Nat Hentoff is a columnistfor The Village Voice, Free Inquiry, and The Progressive...
...It took the Supreme Court to, at last, rein in the executive's imprisonment of American citizens indefinitely, and without charges...
...That includes telephone companies and Internet service providers...
...National Security Letters are issued without going to a judge, despite the repeated Bush-Ashcroft mantra that every action under the Patriot Act must have a court order...
...There need be no evidence of a person's wrongdoing...
...George Orwell could not see that far ahead...
...The recipient is forbidden by law to tell any other person that the FBI has demanded the records included in the NSL...
...Judge Marrero ruled that these National Security Letters violated both the First and Fourth Amendments...
...Since 9/11, those values have been continually eroded...
...That means those getting the letters, said Judge Marrero, couldn't even tell their lawyers of this gargantuan invasion of their privacy...
...someone whose anonymous web log, or blog, is critical of the government...
...In compliance with the ACLU lawsuit, the Justice Department disclosed a dense six-page, blacked-out list of NSLs it had issued in one fourteen-month period (October 26, 2001, when the Patriot Act was passed, to January 21, 2003...
...It is precisely times like these," said Marrero, "that demand heightened vigilance, especially by the judiciary, to ensure that—as a people and a nation—we steer a principled course faithful and true to our still-honored founding values...
...No Administration can be trusted with our liberties...
...Judge Victor Mar-rero has challenged the entire federal judiciary to persistently, and vigorously, guard the separation of powers...
...As Fox News's resident constitutionalist, Judge Andrew Napolitano, approvingly said: "This stops the FBI from writing their own warrants...
Vol. 68 • December 2004 • No. 12
