NSA Senate oversight bill may handcuff U.S. companies (from challenging legality of NSL) [View all]

[kpete]

Source: CNET

NSA Senate oversight bill may handcuff U.S. companies
Proposal that supposedly increases oversight of the National Security Agency instead could hinder companies trying to challenge warrantless demands for their confidential customer data



A proposal in Congress touted as increasing oversight of the National Security Agency could instead derail legal challenges to the U.S. government's warrantless demands for confidential customer data.

Legislation introduced last month by Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, alters the ground rules that currently permit U.S. companies to object to a secretive intelligence-gathering technique, called a national security letter, used by the federal government to obtain both individual and bulk customer records.

Part of Leahy's proposal prevents companies from directly challenging the legality of NSL (National Security Letter) requests in their local courts, meaning they need to rely on the Justice Department to initiate litigation in a jurisdiction of its own choosing -- a dramatic change that raises the cost of a legal challenge and reduces the odds of it succeeding.

"Leahy's bill seems to remove the ability of recipients to initiate their own challenges to an NSL gag order," said Matt Zimmerman, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is litigating an NSL case in San Francisco. If the measure becomes law, Zimmerman said, EFF might not have been able to file its lawsuit in the northern district of California, and the Justice Department "most certainly would not have either."

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57592778-38/nsa-senate-oversight-bill-may-handcuff-u.s-companies/