Botched court doc outs Google as respondent in national security flap
An error by the US Department of Justice's document-redaction staff has inadvertently let slip a secret that the DoJ has spent months battling in the courts to protect – albeit one that will come as a surprise to no one.
The DoJ has long maintained that the practice of using National Security Letters (NSLs) to obtain information from tech companies about their customers must be absolutely hush-hush. The letters are so secretive, in fact, that companies that receive them aren't allowed to discuss them or even admit that they exist.
That's why, when the US District Court for the Southern District of New York published a document filed by a tech company arguing that the First Amendment to the US Constitution gives it the right to talk about NSLs it has received, every single mention of the company's name was blacked out.
