EFF Wins National Security Letter Transparency Lawsuit

A federal district court in San Francisco has ruled strongly in favor of our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records of how and when the FBI lifts gag orders issued with National Security Letters (NSLs). One provision of the law required the FBI to develop “termination procedures” to lift NSL gag orders if they were no longer necessary to protect national security or other important government interests. It claimed that the very letters it sends to NSL recipients to tell them it is terminating a gag order—documents that by their very nature were created to be public—could allow criminals and terrorists to learn sensitive information about the FBI’s investigative techniques.

Source: www.eff.org