We've covered for several years the growing use (or in a significant number of proven cases, the abuse) of National Security Letters. NSLs allow the government to obtain records from broadband ISPs or other businesses, then invoke a gag order against the ISP with no judicial review. That's of course fairly open to abuse, given the FBI could obtain any records they want, nobody could talk about it, and nobody could review it. As such, a government investigation in 2010 found 60% of FBI’s NSLs failed to conform to Justice Department rules, and another 22% involved improper requests or unauthorized information collection.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting read on how the government is facing their most serious challenge yet to the use of these letters, with an unidentified California telecom operator (which the WSJ thinks could be Credo, but which could also be Sonic.net) challenging their use on constitutional grounds. They've also been counter-sued by the DOJ:The EFF is once again in the thick of things, and has been representing the unnamed telecom operator. Opposition to these letters has been focused mainly around smaller operators. Nicholas Merrill, who ran a WiMax operator and spent years fighting such letters, recently announced he'd soon be launching the country's first surveillance-proof ISP whose primary purpose (aside from providing broadband) will be to fight the government's relentless efforts to expand their surveillance authority with quite often a total disregard for law.