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PATRIOT Act applies to blogs?

Robin Good reports that the far-reaching PATRIOT Act may even be applied to blogs. US Federal District Judge Victor Marrero notes that the FBI can abuse the National Security Letter power given to them through the PATRIOT Act to go after bloggers. Judge Marrero says the FBI could use NSLs “to discern the identity of someone whose anonymous web log, or ‘blog,’ is critical of the Government.”

Those NSLs of course come equipped with a full gag order and can be issued without any judicial oversight (a judge doesn’t have to approve the FBI to issue one). Anybody see the warning flags yet? Seems to me that this could be a huge infringement of First Amendment rights as persons expressing dissenting opinions are bullied by the FBI for exercising their right to free speech. This amounts to censorship.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 16th, 2004 at 11/16/2004 12:33 pm and is filed under Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “PATRIOT Act applies to blogs?”

  1. TechGnome Says:
    November 18th, 2004 at 11/18/2004 6:13 pm

    One of the many reasons I stopping political postings on my site.

    Scary stuff.

    Tg

  2. Ray Says:
    November 19th, 2004 at 11/19/2004 7:53 am

    TG,

    Doesn’t that mean that you have already given in to the bully tactics? They have succeeded in scaring you out of your First Amendment rights without even actually threatening you.

    We are still protected by the First Amendment. We will just have to remind them of it. The Constitution is still the “law of the land” — it out-ranks the PATRIOT Act.

    Ray

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