Shining Light on National Security Letters

I dont see how these provide any transparency other than into pure process.

These provide no context, who, or what type of accounts were sent NSLs. Were they suspected child pornographers? Occupy Wall Street Protesters, Terrorists?

Since any pertinent information was redacted, we get nothing more than nearly identical form-letter templates with nothing much unique except the file number and date and who sent it.

THANKS OBAMA

It would be a lot more satisfying to know the context of these. Was [redacted customer #3] a terrorist, a spy, some guy who got swatted by the kids down the street?

More like "Shining a light sort of near, in the vague direction of NSL's, but without really doing much to illuminate them in the end."

Most interesting part of DOJ letters: "[Y]ou should not provide information ... that would disclose the content of any electronic communication." "Subject lines of e-mails are content information and should not be provided pursuant to this letter." The letters were directed to logs, dates, addresses, essentially unmasking tools.