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Yahoo Publishes National Security Letters After FBI Drops Gag Orders:

The FBI has been issuing national security letters for decades. The controversial subpoenas, which allow the feds to obtain customer records and transaction data from internet service providers and other companies without a court order, come with a perpetual gag order that prevents recipients from disclosing that they’ve received an NSL.

Only a small handful of recipients have ever publicly disclosed that they got one from the government, and only after lengthy court battles challenging the subpoenas. But today, Yahoo became the first company to go public about NSLs it has received without needing to duke it out with the feds in court.

Reddit Hints—Without Saying Anything—That It Got a National Security Letter:

In Reddit’s transparency report for 2014, it indicated in a section titled “national security requests” that it had received no National Security Letter during that year, or any order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

“As of January 29, 2015, reddit has never received a National Security Letter, an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or any other classified request for user information.” The company also noted in the last sentence of that section, “If we ever receive such a request, we would seek to let the public know it existed.”

Now, in Reddit’s transparency report for 2015, that entire section is missing.

The National Security Letter spy tool has been uncloaked, and it’s bad:

The National Security Letter (NSL) is a potent surveillance tool that allows the government to acquire a wide swath of private information—all without a warrant. Federal investigators issue tens of thousands of them each year to banks, ISPs, car dealers, insurance companies, doctors, and you name it. The letters don’t need a judge’s signature and come with a gag to the recipient, forbidding the disclosure of the NSL to the public or the target.

For the first time, as part of a First Amendment lawsuit, a federal judge ordered the release of what the FBI was seeking from a small ISP as part of an NSL. Among other things, the FBI was demanding a target’s complete Web browsing history, IP addresses of everyone a person has corresponded with, and records of all online purchases, according to a court documentunveiled Monday. All that’s required is an agent’s signature denoting that the information is relevant to an investigation.