FBI Uses Patriot Act Against Internet Archive

Trash Dispatch: a story by Ryan Singel

FBI Uses Patriot Act Against Internet Archive But Loses

The Internet Archive, a project to create a digital library of the web for posterity, successfully fought a secret government Patriot Act order for records about one of its patrons and won the right to make the order public, civil liberties groups announced Wednesday morning.On November 26, 2007, the FBI served a controversial National Security Letter (.pdf) on the Internet Archive’s founder Brewster Kahle, asking for records about one of the library’s registered users, asking for the user’s name, address and activity on the site.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive’s lawyers, fought the NSL, challenging its constitutionality in a December 14 complaint (.pdf) to a federal court in San Francisco. The FBI agreed on April 21 to withdraw the letter and unseal the court case, making some of the documents available to the public.

read more at wired.com | digg story

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