[SGVLUG] National Security Letter forces ISP president to be quieton subject

[Swantje]

"Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of
my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received
an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet
with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or
where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place
where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am
the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have
no choice but to look them in the eye and lie."

Well, that would be criminal PERsecution. Any ethical person would
have no choice, but to tell the truth and face the consequences. I'm
glad that I've never had to make such a difficult choice, but lying to
my family would just be unacceptable. The consequences of living such
a double life would be much greater than an arrest, however scary.

I agree with Tom - if these 140,000 people (or whatever the number
was) wouldn't be so scared, there would be much less of a problem,
because it would be looked into already...


On 9/7/07, Emerson, Tom (*IC) <Tom.Emerson at wbconsultant.com> wrote:
> > -----Original Message----- Of matti
> >
> > fyi - interesting...
> >
> > Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL)
> > in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access
> > and consulting business.[..]
>
> You know, sometimes you quote from the article [without attribution] and
> other times you comment on your own before giving the link -- in this
> case, /knowing/ that you are/were doing some consulting of that nature,
> I thought this was the latter until I saw it in the article...
>
> > -- I suspected that the FBI was
> > abusing its power and that the letter sought information to
> > which the FBI was not entitled
> >
> > http://www.washingtonpost.com/ [...]
>
> Other than the fact this is 6 months old, it got me to thinking about
> the concept of "trade secrets" and other patent issues.  Once a "trade
> secret" is revealed, "the genie cannot be put back into the bottle" as
> they say, and you can no longer claim it as "secret".  I would think
> that if you violated some of the wierder provisions of the "gag" order
> and were arrested for it, the arrest would be public knowledge and raise
> the curiosity of bystanders.  As more eyes "looked into the problem",
> the bugs would be found in a heartbeat... ;)
>
>


-- 
"Small things done with great love will change the world."