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Can they get around this by citing 2 partially overlapping ranges in separate reports?

E.g. report 1: "We received 0-500 NSLs" report 2: "We received 450-950 NSLs"




No. The ranges were apparently the result of tense negotiations with DoJ and are strictly defined.

It's especially frustrating that the lowest range includes zero, so it's impossible to say for sure that a certain company has never received a request.


You can leak information with just one range: "We received between 332 and 334 NSLs." If they require larger ranges, it's not so different going from there to, "We received between 133 and 533 NSLs."

Whether a judge will agree that you've complied with the requirements after that sort of trickery is something else entirely. I can't imagine them not complaining about that sort of tactic and whether you get away with it might depend on the judges and lawyers involved.


Yeah, "letter of the law" defenses tend to work better when the intent of the rule in dispute is unclear. There's lots of arguments about the intent behind the 2nd amendment, which means it mostly falls back to a "letter of the law" interpretation. There's no dispute that the NSL obfuscation compromise is intended to obscure the number of NSLs. Revealing the number of NSLs, while still following the "letter of the law," wouldn't fly in front of a judge.




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