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Comment by yoamro | Hacker News Reader

"In a democracy, if your government is going to gag someone from speaking, it should publicly explain why"

It seems like even the ACLU is saying "it's okay to censor people, just please tell us why". Im not sure what to even think of this.

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There are legitimate reasons why the government needs to operate in secret for a short while — a sting on a suspected criminal, where they have strong evidence, but need to close the case without scaring the target into fleeing the country, for example. This usage should be firmly rooted in law and disclosed after a reasonable period of time, however.

I was thinking this. But I can't tell that from the article if this isn't what's going on in these cases. Has the government permanently stopped Twitter from talking to the customers in question about something, or only temporarily?

Even those "needs" need to be balanced against having an open legal process. We have both NSLs and a "no fly list." For the purpose of keeping some very high-value suspect from fleeing, the no fly list should be sufficient. This looks like an exercise of power just to maintain and expand secrecy and the supremacy of "national security" over legal process.

I'm not trying to argue secrecy is right in this case — I don't know enough. I'm just saying that anyone (including the ACLU!) should recognize that limited & temporary secrecy is really important in combating crime or fighting wars. The question is just how we make sure it is limited, temporary, and really only applied to the right things — and not used as a way to cover up/hide information which should be public.

> * recognize that limited & temporary secrecy is really important in combating crime or fighting wars*

How important? Quantify that. Start at zero, and then justify all the really vital things. You may find there are actually zero existential threats if some super-Snowden revealed all secrets.

No they are saying, "the government might have a legitimate case for censorship but we can't even tell because they don't give a reason"

Before they would at least give some bullshit answer like, "state secrets", "means and methods" etc etc. Now they don't even put up those lies.

IANAL I believe that there are valid reasons for gag orders. See http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Gag+Order

However it's fairly obvious that the purposes which a gag order is commonly used, preventing jury tampering, media distortion, or other disruption to the operations of a fair court, do not seem to apply in the instances of the article.

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