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Comment by magicalist | Hacker News Reader

> The feds have gone to ALL device makers and demanded access, using National Security Letters each time to force the manufacturers to enter into their clandestine plan, without any public awareness.

It's a shame this is the top post.

A National Security Letter absolutely cannot do anything like this. NSLs are such a weird HN boogeyman. Absolutely a violation of the first and fourth amendments, but they are administrative subpoenas. They cannot compel the kind of action you're talking about.

There are plenty of ways to twist interpretations of statute to try and make investigative and prosecutorial overreaches legal, but it's ridiculous how often these NSL posts get voted up to "educate" others on a subject the poster clearly hasn't even read up on themselves.

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I'm not sure where your beef with his broad strokes summarization lies. Here [0] is basically what he said, but detailed, by the EFF. They are data-demand letters that subject the recipient to a gag order so ridiculous that the receipt of and existence of the NSL is itself gagged (and thus unable to be openly challenged in court).

So yes, what he said is not only possible, but documented.

[0] https://www.eff.org/issues/national-security-letters

I said nothing about the gag order attached to an NSL. They are a violation of First Amendment rights and adhere to basically none of the checks the courts have put on gag orders in the past. The reason this hasn't been rectified is exactly as you point out: their very nature helps eliminate most legal challenges to them.

But that's not what I was talking about. An NSL is an administrative subpoena. It can compel you to turn over metadata about communications, for instance, which is absolutely a Fourth Amendment violation with what you can discern from modern "meta"data, but it can't compel you to turn over the content of those communications, and it certainly can't compel you to, for instance, alter the software on your customer's phone to allow easy intercept of all future communications.

Cool, thanks for clarifying!

As someone who is not American it doesn't matter to me how it's worded or under what category it falls, but that the three letter agencies can completely silence individuals so that they can do whatever they want with immunity is absolutely terrifying. Lavabit, and the Ross Ulbricht case are particularly bad examples that spring to mind.

Pretty much. It means the very basics of your legal system, the habeas corpus, went to the trash bin. And ours are unfortunatly following.

The fact remains that after the words “National Security” have been uttered, the Constitution and the Law go right down the drain.

Not sure that law goes down the drain, but would agree that it's an often hard type of law to understand since by nature it is secretive.

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