Civil Liberties

ISP Head Reveals What It's Like To Receive a Secret Order To Snoop on a Customer

It's creepy, that's what it is

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The FISA request was a tricky one, because it was a warrant through the FISA court — whether you believe that is legitimate or not. I have a hard time with secret courts. I ran it past my attorney and asked, "Is there anyway we can fight this?" and he said "No. It is legitimate."

It was also different [from other warrants] because it was for monitoring. They wanted to come in and put in equipment on my network to monitor a single customer. The customer they were monitoring was a particular website that was very benign. It seems ridiculous to me. It was beyond absurd. It wasn't like a guns and ammo website. …

It was open ended. I called six months into it and said, "How long is this going to go on?" and they said, "I don't know." I went on for nine months. If it were still there, I would have probably smashed it by now. There have been no [related] arrests that I have heard of.

I can't tell you all the details about it. I would love to tell you all the details, but I did get the gag order. I have probably told people too much. That was two years ago. If they want to come back and haunt me, fine.

(H/T np complete)