I will jump around with this post, but for coherence, it is about privacy.
First here's what one of the little hummers look like, with redactions (where it could be you) and with a lot of background scanner/copier "noise."
Isn't that last page special?
Even the criteria of what they might be poking the long noses into is secret.
I got it off the Internet.
An NSL. That's National Security Letter. Mailed out per the pernicious federal statute named in true Orwellian doublespeak, the Patriot Act.
If your local library got one with your name on it, or your ISP got one for you, that is about what they would have gotten. And they could not tell you or anyone else about it. And no reviewing judge need spend time. Court approval in advance of propounding the inquiry is not required.
And because their very existence is secret, this one getting published is an anomaly. An unusual chance to see what one looks like, unless you are a librarian or ISP officer, or otherwise a recipient.
You wonder whether the postal carrier is sworn to secrecy, or if you don't wonder that, I do.
They must have special nationwide fleet of special postal staff, looking like Herzog's Don Aguirre or like characters out of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, to deliver these top secret letters.
It is an inside-out Omerta, where cooperation with the government is kept secret, and not where secrets are kept by noncooperation.
It is paid for by your taxes.
Again, the document source is about the Internet Archive [aka the WayBack Machine] which is a useful tool to see what, for example, a lawfirm like Dorsey Whitney had on its website about lawyer Jay Lindgren and Ramsey Town Center in the luster days before the thing landed in reality with a big bug-on-the-windshield splat.
That archive service allows you to see what Dorsey Whitney scrubbed.
Or you can go WayBack in time, and see what the now defunct Nedegaard financed Ramsey Town Center LLC's website, ramsey03.com, had to say about Natalie Steffen at the Town Center Groundbreaking back in 2003, etc.
I will not give those archive links. Work your way through the navigation for yourself if you care to. Learn to use the resource.
I downloaded the above NSL, originally posted as redacted in pdf format, here.
Internet Archive posts about their giving their single finger salute to the FBI, here. That page gives links to other coverage. The EFF, an organization all freedom loving people should know of and support, on its homepage features the litigation against the FBI, (in which it played a key role), here.
EFF gives its detailed account of things, here, including of all things, an archive of litigation papers from the lawsuit.
This is one of those morning coffee, that's interesting things to read - but then I decided to post when I thought of my intellectual mentor in these things, TwoPuttTommy; he being my mentor via his email "signature"
It’s A Great Day To Be A Veteran
NOTICE: The National Security Agency ('NSA') of the United States may have read this email without warning, warrant, nor notice, nor legislative or judicial oversight. You may not review the secret file so derived nor challenge actions resulting from it. The US President, through the use of 'signing statements', further reserves the right to circumvent any legislation restricting this exercise of executive authority or assigning executive accountability. For this reason the owner of this email account cannot ensure the privacy of this communication.
And do other true patriots act up, about the NSA spying, trying to quell the offensive practice?
EFF does, here. In great detail, and it probably will make TwoPutter smile to see company in that quest.
Anyone who has exchanged emails with TwoPuttTommy will instantly recognize that signature ending to his messages AND TwoPuttTommy made the daily newspaper news, in a way, with Strib today reporting about Ron Carey living in a glass house while throwing a truckload of stones at Al Franken's people's handling of accounts. Apparently Strib took notice, as it reports, when,
A left-leaning blogger tried to ask Carey about the party’s FEC reports at a news conference the GOP called last week to highlight Franken’s problems. Carey dismissed him, saying the press briefing “is something for our credentialed media here.”
Carey did not respond this week to Star Tribune requests for an interview about the FEC filings.
“Just like any political entity, the Republican Party of Minnesota continues to work with the FEC to make certain our filings are in compliance,” party spokesman Mark Drake said in an e-mail Tuesday.
Take you hat off, TwoPutter, and salute the flag. It's you they mean.
And to go back full-circle, that Internet Archive NSL target - was it me, was it you, was it TwoPuttTommy? We will not know and can only guess. My guess?
It was not Michele Bachmann. It was not Elwyn Tinklenberg. They're both likely okay with the FBI. Only malcontents would be targeted. My guess - Former FBI agent Coleen Rowley, who had the malcontentious termerity to whistleblow on the stupidity and bureaucratic mindsets of her FBI superiors when strange people were showing up in flying schools and wanting to know how to manage commercial jet in-the-air flight without being interested in how to land one of those aircraft. Then, beyond that attention getter as "not a real team player" she had the further termerity of wanting to unseat Col. Kline from his place in Congress, another thing the FBI et al. might not have liked. More "not a real team player" stuff.
So, without anything else to go on, my guess is ex-FBI agent Colleen Rowley was the undisclosed target of the FBI's NSL in the Internet Archive, et al v Mukasey et al, No. 07-6346-CW (N.D. Cal) litigation. Clearly as a voice of discord that way, and as a true patriot acting up, she was a nail that stood up. And we all know that old saying. And bloggers, they often are voices of discord, acting-up, and they have that habit - ferreting around the internet and when current postings are in question, or unavailable, they have that other habit, using Internet Archive as a bit more ferreting. So, me, TwoPuttTommy, any one of us caring to raise a public voice, any of us could have been the target of the secret NSL that EFF, ACLU and Internet Archive had the will to oppose.
Or it could have been Bruce Nedegaard, J. Scott Renne, or Bill Sandison. The three were under federal investigation. However ---
My second guess is they'd focused on Tuttle but there was a bug in the computer.
Finally, for all of us who would like to tell the FBI and the NSA and George Bush and Dick Cheney about what we think about the things they are doing to our liberty and privacy and pride in America, there is this:
_______UPDATE_______
I forgot these C/net News links that give history, and link to online pdf copies of a judicial opinion on constitutionality of the secret NSL procesures (see c/net, here); along with a link to a 2007 Justice Dept. Inspector General report on FBI handling and "serious misuse" of FBI surveilance authorization, including its NSL powers (at c/net, here).
Each pdf is 100+ pages, so I recommend scanning them, over detailed study. The judge writes double space, but it's legalese. The Inspector General report is single space and twice as many pages.