FBI Secret spying on US citizens ruled Unconstitutional

A Federal Judge in San Francisco has sided with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a California Telecommunications company, Credo, in declaring the secretive FBI spying authorized by the Patriot Act unconstitutional.  Michael Kieschnick, chief executive of Credo Mobile, hailed the judge's order as "the most significant court victory for our constitutional rights since the dark day when George W Bush signed the Patriot Act".

District Judge Susan Illston held that the law unconstitutionally barred the service providers who receive the letters from discussing them publicly until the government gave them permission. That "gag rule" effectively prevented the public from debating a controversial exercise in governmental power even after any justification for the secrecy had passed, Illston ruled. She also took issue with the power the law gives the FBI to stop a court from ordering disclosure, saying it violated the Constitution's separation of powers.
Illston ordered the FBI to stop issuing national security letters and not to enforce the gag rule on any previously issued letter. But she prevented her decision from going into effect for 90 days to give the Obama administration a chance to appeal.

 The FBI had gone wild since given their Secret Police powers.  Google received between zero and 999 NSLs in 2009, as well as 2010, 2011, and 2012. That's not a lot of useful data, but it's more than we knew even one day ago.  We are pretty sure the number is a lot bigger than zero, probably in the hundreds. 
The FBI made 16,511 national-security-letter requests for information regarding 7,201 people in 2011, the latest data available. The FBI uses the letters to collect unlimited kinds of sensitive, private information, such as financial and phone records.  In case you were looking the other way, The FBI made 16,511 national-security-letter requests for information regarding 7,201 people in 2011

In Oregon, Ron Wyden voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act, but tried to modify its more odious provisions, while Jeff Merkley and Earl Blumenauer voted against it on Civil Liberties grounds..