A heavily redacted page from the lawsuit

ACLU v. Ashcroft is a lawsuit on behalf of some unknown party on April 9, 2004. Because of the secrecy rules involved, the government would not let them disclose they had filed a case for nearly a month, after which they were permitted to release a heavily redacted version of the complaint. However, they still cannot disclose what Internet service provider was served with the request to produce documents, and opted to challenge the law.

The ACLU sued to invalidate the national security letter (NSL) provision of the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The NSL (Section 2709) permitted the FBI to obtain customer records from phone and Internet companies in terrorism investigations, and was introduced by Democrat Patrick Leahy and enacted in 1986. The ACLU argued that the NSL violated the First and Fourth Amendments of the US Constitution because:

• Section 2709 failed to spell out any process whereby a phone or Internet company could try to quash an NSL in court (no dispute was found here because the government agreed that the recipient of the subpoena can challenge it in court)
• Section 2709 prohibited the recipient of an NSL from disclosing that he had received such a request from the FBI and outweighs the FBI's need for secrecy in counter-terrorism investigations.

The Court found section 2709 of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act unconstitutional. The Court reasoned that it could not find in the provision an implied right for the person receiving the subpoena to challenge it in court, as is constitutionally required, dismissing the presumptive need for absolute secrecy in terrorism cases. No part of the USA Patriot Act was affected.

External links

• ACLU: Challenge to National Security Letter Authority

• Weekly Standard: Taking Dictation from the ACLU: A case study in anti-Patriot Act propaganda, October 18, 2004