Nonprofit Group Wins Fight Over FBI Inquiry Into Records

The Federal Bureau of Investigations has withdrawn its request for information about one of the users of a nonprofit digital library, in San Francisco, after the charity took the agency to court claiming a freedom-of-speech violation, reports the Associated Press.

The FBI sent the Digital Archive a letter last November seeking information, without a judge’s order, about one of the charity’s patrons. The group sued the bureau, saying that because the letter prohibited recipients from discussing it with anyone else, it violated the group’s free-speech rights. Last week the FBI agreed to withdraw the letter but did not explain why.

“Without judicial or public oversight, there is literally nothing stopping the FBI from issuing improper demands for records,” said Melissa Goodman, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented the Internet Archive.

“The information requested in the national-security letter was relevant to an ongoing authorized national-security investigation,” said John Miller, the assistant FBI director in a statement. He added that such letters “remain indispensable tools for national-security investigations and permit the FBI to gather the basic building blocks for our counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations.”