A Decade-Old Gag Order, Lifted
This is reporting that Nick Merrill, who was under a gag order restricting his ability to talk about a subpoena he received in 2004, is no longer gagged. It links to an editorial he wrote (anonymously) about that gag order, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03... , in which he writes:> "Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled."This new article does not disclose who that subscriber was, but the article, and the earlier op-ed, seem to imply that the subscriber's identity alone is enough to suspect an abuse of power. We'll probably hear more about that in the near future, but I'd like to make a prediction. The most likely interpretation is that this was a critic of the FBI or of the US government as a whole, and that the subpoena - which seeks to unmask the subject's identity - would be a prelude to retaliation.The article goes on to describe how the FBI has materially misrepresented its use of National Security Letters to Congress, and that the practice of sending them has twice been struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. By all appearances, a significant chunk of the US law enforcement apparatus has simply gone rogue, stopped respecting Congress and the courts and is instead focused on increasing its own power.