The Government's Gag Order Against the ACLU

The National Security Letter (NSL) section of the USA Patriot Act contains a gag provision that prohibits anyone who receives an NSL from “disclos[ing] to any person that the [FBI] has sought or obtained access to information or records.” The gag provision continues to prevent the ACLU from disclosing to the public a vast amount of innocuous, non-sensitive information about our constitutional challenge to the NSL power. For example, the government has demanded that the ACLU redact a sentence that described its anonymous client's business as "provid[ing] clients with the ability to access the Internet.” The government even insisted that the ACLU black out a direct quote from a Supreme Court case in our brief.