Federal Judge Strikes Down Section of Patriot Act

[unixronin]

"A federal judge struck down an important surveillance provision of the antiterrorism legislation known as the USA Patriot Act yesterday, ruling that it broadly violated the Constitution by giving the federal authorities unchecked powers to obtain private information.

The ruling, by Judge Victor Marrero of Federal District Court in Manhattan, was the first to uphold a challenge to the surveillance sections of the act, which was adopted in October 2001 to expand the powers of the federal government in national security investigations."

This ruling was handed down in an ACLU case challenging "national security letters", a provision which allows the government to subpoena unlimited personal information, without court review, and place a gag order on disclosure of the subpoena.  Judge Marrero ruled that the provision violates the Fourth Amendment.  To give the Bush administration time to respond, the ruling will not take effect for 90 days.

(Sorry, I can't find a registration-free article on this.  I use cypherpunks/cypherpunks; BugMeNot offers spacepastry/cupcake.)

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Update:

eleazar, responding in bullet time, points out this volokh.com article as more informative.  technoshaman offers a Wired.com article; just the fact that Wired are poseurs with delusions of relevance doesn't mean they can't occasionally get something right.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot what it was that REALLY got up my nose, which was when they tried to sue Walter Jon Williams for copyright infringement over Hardwired, trying to claim that his title violated their copyright on the word Wired, in utter blissful ignorance of the fact that Williams wrote Hardwired ten years before wired.com was so much as a gleam in a jumped-up SOMA e-journalism entrepreneur's eye.
I mean, can you think of a better way to publicly scream "WE HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE" at the top of their lungs?

[eleazar.livejournal.com]

I've just written this software program that lets you control your houselights over the web. I call it Firefox. Someone go send the C&D to the Mozilla people, will ya'?

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I can, actually. Mastercard's attempt to sue Brad Templeton over the "Priceless" parody he published a while back. To which Templeton responded.... in the form of a "Priceless" parody. I about laughed my ass off.

But, yeah, that was pretty lame.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Damn, I think I missed that. :)