A federal district judge ruled that U.S. security and law enforcement agencies could not indefinitely prevent Yahoo from releasing the details of a grand jury subpoena in pursuit of subscriber account information. The judge said the gag deprived Yahoo of its free speech rights and could not be justified given the need for transparency. “In an era of increasing public demand for transparency about the extent of government demands for data from providers like Yahoo!, this cannot stand,” wrote the judge. (Reuters Canada, February 6, 2015, by Dan Levine)
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has a section on gag orders in its publication, “The First Amendment Handbook,” that calls gag orders a barrier to reporting the news. It also cited a Texas case, Davenport v. Garcia, in which the court found that “…gag orders on trial participants are as serious as those on the press and subject to the same strict test for constitutionality.”