Reply to post:

Surely the best way to combat this is just to immediately announce it and refuse to co-operate.

"We've been required to hand over your data without telling you. We refuse. We've been fined 250K a day for our refusal and ordered not to tell you about that either. We refuse both the gagging order and to pay the fine. We've been taken to a secret court over our refusals, and ordered not to tell you that we've been taken to a secret court. We refuse to remain silent."

Mass refusal to play ball from all the major companies would surely force the government to back down. We've already pretty clearly established that they can't actually send anyone to Jail, so other than fining the company, what can they do?

If the original order is found to be unconstitutional - which I think we're all largely agreed that it will be - then all the consequences of refusing to keep silent eventually go away. Just keep refusing to co-operate as publicly as possible.

If some higher (public) court ultimately decides that they do need to pay a fine, you want to make sure that that fine is so utterly huge that it will most definitely bankrupt the company. That's a wonderful piece of PR that will play out beautifully in the media.

"We're closing our business because the government bankrupted us in order to act against your interests. Terribly sorry about all the jobs and that. Please consider this come election time."