[Advocacy Advisors] National Security Letters served on individuals

Mon Aug 5 03:36:14 UTC 2013

Resigning before complying is the only way to keep the WMF from being
'crippled' in the trust department. Or maybe WMF has a different set of
values.

Any WMF employee who complies with a NSA request to facilitate capturing
programs has already broken the privacy policy in the extreme, and should
probably be fired. So resigning before being forced to comply seems the
ethical choice in my opinion.  Of course the government may serve someone
else, but they may stop after a few people have resigned. Even the ED is
replacable. But trust lost is much harder to replace.

John Vandenberg.
sent from Galaxy Note
On Aug 5, 2013 11:49 AM, "Luis Villa" <lvilla at wikimedia.org> wrote:

>
> On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 3:37 PM, James Salsman <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Luis,
>>
>> Would it be legal to adopt a policy that any individual served with a
>> National Security Letter must immediately request a transfer to a
>> department headed by a different C-level officer?
>>
>> If so, is the Foundation willing to adopt such a policy?
>>
> Hi, James-
>
> It's not clear to me what the purpose of such a policy would be. I can
> think of two possible goals, neither of which really work.
>
> If the goal is "frustrate the purpose of the NSL by depriving the
> recipient of the authority to respond to the NSL", then the FBI simply
> continues to send NSLs to whoever we hire as a replacement, until we have
> no one left in ops. At that point, they start working their way up the
> chain and we're left with (1) a crippled organization and (2) eventually a
> letter to the ED, who is legally compelled to make the thing happen anyway.
> Or, if the policy is public, they just start with the ED.
>
> If the goal is "alert the community that NSLs are being sent" (or if that
> alerting happens accidentally, as a result of public knowledge of the
> policy, + goal #1) then that's probably a violation of the relevant law,
> which allows disclosure only to "those to whom such disclosure is necessary
> to comply with the request or an attorney to obtain legal advice or legal
> assistance with respect to the request" (18 USC 2709(c)(1),
> http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2709).
>
> Note that the statute was updated a few years back to make it quite clear
> that you're allowed to talk to your lawyer about these when you get them,
> recent disclosed letters appear to refer clearly to that permission, and if
> our legal department got one, we'd be eager to fight. (That said, it does
> probably make sense to remind our employers that if they get an NSL, they
> are clearly entitled to speak to LCA; we'll look into how best to do that.)
>
> Luis
>
>
>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Luis Villa
> Deputy General Counsel
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 415.839.6885 ext. 6810
>
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