A federal appeals court in New York will hear oral argument on Tuesday in the ACLU's lawsuit fighting for the public's right to know the legal justifications for government spying.
The Freedom of Information Act suit seeks the release of secret memos written by government lawyers that provided the foundation for the warrantless surveillance of Americans' international communications. In essence, these memos serve as the law that governs the executive branch. By withholding them, the government is flouting a core principle of democratic society: The law must be public.
The memos cover the government's legal interpretations of Executive Order 12333 [(EO 12333)], which was issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. It's the primary authority under which the NSA [(National Security Agency)] conducts surveillance, and it encompasses an array of warrantless, high-tech spying programs. While much of this spying occurs outside the United States and is ostensibly directed at foreigners, it nonetheless vacuums up vast quantities of Americans' communications. That's because in today's interconnected world, communications are frequently sent, routed, or stored abroad — where they may be collected, often in bulk, in the course of the NSA's spying activities.
For example, the NSA has relied on EO 12333 to collect nearly 5 billion records per day on the locations of cell phones, as well as hundreds of millions of contact lists and address books from email and messaging accounts. It also intercepted private data from Google and Yahoo user accounts as that information traveled between those companies' data centers located abroad.
Related: DOJ Made Secret Arguments to Break Crypto, Now ACLU Wants to Make Them Public
Related Stories
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
DOJ made secret arguments to break crypto, now ACLU wants to make them public
Earlier this year, a federal judge in Fresno, California, denied prosecutors' efforts to compel Facebook to help it wiretap Messenger voice calls. But the precise legal arguments that the government made, and that the judge ultimately rejected, are still sealed.
On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union formally asked the judge to unseal court dockets and related rulings associated with this ongoing case involving alleged MS-13 gang members. ACLU lawyers argue that such a little-charted area of the law must be made public so that tech companies and the public can fully know what's going on. This element of the case began in August 2018, when an FBI special agent told the court in an affidavit that "there is no practical method available by which law enforcement can monitor these calls" between suspected MS-13 gangsters. Authorities already had traditional wiretaps and were able to intercept written messages between the defendants, who are now in custody.
While traditional telecom companies must give access to police under a 1990s-era law known as CALEA, Internet-based calls are exempt, despite the government's previous efforts to change the law. Prosecutors seemingly argued that Facebook nevertheless had to comply with the government's request. The judge reportedly denied the government's efforts during an August 14, 2018 hearing. In their new filing, ACLU lawyers pointed out that "neither the government's legal arguments nor the judge's legal basis for rejecting the government motion has ever been made public."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday December 05 2018, @01:06PM (10 children)
Gotta love a "free" country.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday December 05 2018, @03:39PM
We're not blaming the government, are we? Because, I mean, you know...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:04PM (8 children)
Who else is better?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:19PM (7 children)
This suggests that the EU is making laws in a secretive process [euobserver.com], but it probably isn't as outright bad as the U.S. secret justifications for surveillance. Maybe Canada is doing better. I wouldn't look to Australia given their recent activities. You can toss South America, Africa, Russia + Eastern Europe, Asia, etc. right in the bin.
In the meantime, it makes sense to focus on the "moral leader" of the "free world", and the "world's policeman", where the power of Silicon Valley and thus the internet is concentrated. U.S. surveillance affects the whole planet.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:53PM (6 children)
> You can toss South America, Africa, Russia + Eastern Europe, Asia, etc. right in the bin.
Why ? To satisfy your sense of superiority ? "Hey let's just put Japan, Buthan, Singapore, Irak, Benin, Tunisia, Azerbaijan, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Paraguay and Mauritius in one big category, because they must all be worse than us, since we know we are the best."
Not saying that they are all, or even most of them, clean. But that was a bit of an excessive generalization, don't you think ?
It turns out that many countries don't have the time or need to bother with secret lawmaking. Either because there is no pretense of democracy, or because the cops and courts don't need secret laws to crack down on "unpleasant" people, or because their government is actually not doing evil stuff (not the same as being competent, by the way).
Oh, and you forgot Iceland, Switzerland, the European micro-states, and Norway...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @07:04PM (5 children)
There is a substantive difference between not doing something bad because there is no motive or that they can't afford the means, and actually having formal legal protections to prevent it from being done. If you've got evidence that any of those places have got effective laws on the books preventing this kind of abuse, lets hear it. Otherwise its pretty safe to assume that if that shit ain't happening there its not because they are constrained by the will of the people.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday December 05 2018, @07:55PM (4 children)
Logic failure.
The original assertion was that 3 continents' worth of countries can just be assumed to be worse than The Democratic West.
I'm pretty sure the onus is on that poster to prove that all those countries are actually actively acting worse than the US (secret laws being the topic), not on the person questioning the over-broad assertion to prove that all of them don't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @08:04PM (3 children)
Reality failure.
This is an informal discussion board. Not a philosophical treatise of formal logic.
Your demand that the OP make a thorough accounting of every single other country's legal system, isn't just unreasonable, its designed to shut down the discussion without actually engaging with it. If it is so important to you, all you have to do is find one counter example. That's a LOT less work than what you are demanding of others. But you won't do it for exactly the same reason no one would indulge your demands either.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday December 05 2018, @09:00PM (2 children)
I'm reacting to some guy dismissing three quarters of the world out of some sense of superiority.
"Those continents just don't matter, those people couldn't possibly get it right if we don't"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @09:09PM
Yes, its clear you decided to interpret his words that way and were reacting to that interpretation.
On the other hand I presented a more reasonable way to interpret his words.
Up to you which version you prefer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 05 2018, @11:43PM
Exactly. You're reacting not thinking. Shouldn't be hard with that many countries to find someone, right? Unless, of course, they're not there.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday December 05 2018, @01:22PM (16 children)
-- Commisioner Pravin Lal, Alpha Centauri
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @01:41PM
The Man In Black: We are men of action. Lies do not become us.
Count Rugen: Well spoken, sir.
The Man In Black: I see you have six fingers on your right hand. Someone was looking for you.
--William Goldman
--The Books of Bokonon
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:51PM (13 children)
yay! random fictional quotes from fictional characters, that's really insightful
srsly, its like you don't even understand the point of quotes versus just using your own words to say what you believe
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Wednesday December 05 2018, @11:46PM (12 children)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @05:28AM (8 children)
khallow, yet again with the alt-facts rationalizing lying and deceit as long as it supports his alternate reality
your bubble must be awfully comfortable
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 06 2018, @07:17PM (7 children)
I was merely discussing where a lot of quotes come from, perhaps even a majority. Not I who tried to turn it into something political.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @09:09PM (6 children)
Lol, the entire premise of your "explanation" was something political because your explanation was total bullshit and you would have never made it unless you were enthralled by the quote in question. You think you are a clever genius, but you are just pathetically transparent and utterly predictable.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 06 2018, @09:59PM (5 children)
What was bullshit about it? Do a little research on any famous quote that supposedly came from a dead speaker and more often than not, it came from somewhere else often many decades after the alleged speaker's death. I guess the US is famous for it with so many of its leaders and other famous people attributed with all kinds of stuff.
George Washington didn't chop down the cherry tree or say that government was a fearsome master and dangerous servant. Abraham Lincoln didn't prophecy [snopes.com] that corporations would be scary or that he'd be shipping Ulysses Grant's favorite brand of whiskey to the rest of his generals so they'd fight better.
What I find really bizarre is your assertion that my post was somehow "political". You got brain rot.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 06 2018, @10:04PM
Sorry, I misread the thread. I refer to the stupid claim of "alt-facts" when a cursory researching of quotes indicates misquoting or even making things up is a problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 07 2018, @11:23AM (3 children)
You just answered your own question. This premise of yours is just autofellatio. That's NOT how it works. Well, it is how it works if you spend most of your time in the stupid part of the internet. Which you clearly do. But in the real world, no, that's not what happens "more often than not."
As the actual quote from Anaïs Nin says, “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 07 2018, @04:16PM (2 children)
They were making up [pothos.org] quotes for classical Greek and Roman notables. One reference for the tales of Alexander weeping goes back to the early 17th century, almost four centuries ago. Folks the internet wasn't around all that long.
Take a chill pill or something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 07 2018, @04:48PM (1 child)
You don't understand do you? Yes there have always been people making quotes. ITS IS NOT THE NORMAL CASE. Just like there have always been people murdering. But murder is no the normal case. Capiche? You utter dumbfuck.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 07 2018, @05:00PM
Why in the world are you still ranting? I haven't done a scientific study of this, but it is true.
I found out the hard way when I decided to put some cool quote into some post which I had heard when I was a teenager. Looked it up and it was a fake quote. Same thing happened a few days later with a different quote. It's happened a bunch since. Now, you can type into your favorite search engine, said famous person's name and "apocryphal", and find many of these things.
People like to make up shit because it makes their writing more interesting to the reader. It's not them spinning the quote, it's Albert Einstein or Emperor Caligula. Then once it's done, people recycle the quote without questioning where it came from, except sometimes to attribute it to someone else.
Unlike murder, this is commonplace. You'll just need to get over this.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 07 2018, @11:41AM (2 children)
I still can't get over how well that perfectly sums up your entire personality.
You prefer 100% fabrications over truth because they are "cool." This is just a remarkable self-own.
Today, more than any other day, you have become your callow namesake.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 07 2018, @04:30PM (1 child)
A quote's origin doesn't make it a fabrication or truth. It is a saying that provides insight independent of who allegedly said it, when they allegedly said it, or under what circumstances they allegedly said it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 07 2018, @04:57PM
If the origin doesn't matter, then why bother citing an attribution? Huh? See my first post in this thread, the one you responded to. Here, I will explain for you because you are such an utter dumbfuck that you clearly are incapable of figuring it out and probably incapable of understanding too, but what the hell. The reason people make an attribution is in order to lend weight to the analysis that the quote makes. Any idiot can string together a bunch of words and come up with something pseudo-intellectual. You do it all the time. Attribution is a way of saying "its not just my opinion, its the opinion of somebody who has a valid claim to insight." Attributing a quote to a fictional character does not make the quote any more authoritative. And a false attribution is literally a lie intended to steal the qualifications of the fake author. But hey, its a "cool" quote so that's all that matters. You fucking idiot.
(Score: 5, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:51PM
Good to know I'm not the only one who took those words to heart.
I've been using a paraphrase of that line as my sig for almost 20 years :)
Here is the full text from the game:
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against
tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last loose their grip on information flow will soon burst with
freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide
into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
-- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Librarian's Preface"
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday December 05 2018, @01:33PM (1 child)
They have rules? Beyond "don't get caught"? Shocking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:59PM
If anything the entire tronald dump fiasco has proven that not only do they have rules, they follow them to excruciating levels. Because if they had actually been breaking all the rules, as dump and his basket of guillibles are constantly screaming, he would have been taken down long before the election and all the intercepts would have been released and/or leaked to the public by now to justify that takedown.
(Score: 5, Funny) by LVDOVICVS on Wednesday December 05 2018, @02:43PM
I live in the U.S. My mother lives in Canada. We're both U.S. citizens. However, when I call her and have to listen to her complain about her sciatica for half an hour it give me great comfort to know I'm not alone.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 05 2018, @02:49PM
BOHICA, here come the law!
A lot of people have problems with pubic and public.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday December 05 2018, @02:55PM (21 children)
No, they are not. They are regulations. Regulations carry the force of law, but must be subordinate to law. The law is not secret - anyone who has followed the issue should well know that the Patriot Act is the authorizing law. What could be in question is whether or not the regulations which were established to carry out the Patriot Act are in conflict with that (or any other) Federal Law. Yes, the difference is important, Virginia.
There is absolutely nothing preventing the U.S. Congress from writing, passing, and overriding veto if necessary a law which says the Government may not ask for nor hold on to cell phone records until and unless individual record(s) should be asked for upon probable cause the individual account is involved... blah blah blah... In which case the Executive Orders would have to conform to it. The idea that this won't happen doesn't override the fact that it can happen.
I'm not saying the ACLU can't sue or shouldn't be allowed to ask if the regulations are in conflict with the law, and I can also see why the Government might feel that revealing the regulations might expose how such actions are carried out, revealing methods, and there is therefore a principle of national security at stake. That's why we have courts - to find the overriding principle of law which needs to bind the regulations.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @03:14PM (1 child)
There are no secret courts of law in the United States. Article 1 is clear about that. Which is to say, if the law has to be adjudicated ONLY in secret, then the court adjudicating it is a secret court, and therefore not a court with jurisdiction within the United States. Which is to say that the FISA court may hold court on their favourite color of cafateria jello, but not on any matters that result in law enforcement. And any citations therefrom derived, hold about as much jurisdiction as a handfull of piss.
Not that they don't operate this way, but they do so unlawfully. And if their execution of these methods, they impose a loss on a citizen, it is a crime. If they want to change that, they can pass an amendment. There is a procedure in place for doing what they want to do. They aren't following that procedure. A court that doesn't observe its own rules is betraying it's oath, and by doing so forfeiting its jurisdiction.
You can't swear an oath to the law, and break that oath as part of your SOP, and call both yourself and the law legitimate. Well, you can, King George did. Lots of dictators do. Fortunately the founders wrote a procedure for that too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @05:34PM
yes, this is how local and county courts act around the country too. they hear cases extra-judiciously (via illegal laws) and the "officials "are so brainwashed and ignorant they don't even believe when you explain it to them, or they know, but don't care. when you explain it to the cops they don't care either as they already know they are just hired guns who do what they are told. courts and their henchmen are criminals and traitors and should be dealt with accordingly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:54PM (18 children)
Here's the thing. The regulations are interpretations of the grey areas in the law. Congress leaves grey areas in the law on purpose - they expect that the people closest to the action are better informed and thus leaves it up to their expert discretion. So for all intents and purposes regulations are the law. And if the regulations remain secret it frustrates the democratic process of changing the law to eliminate grey areas that have been abused because if the regs are secret you can't generate the political will to over ride them.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday December 06 2018, @05:01PM (17 children)
It's not that I directly disagree with you - regulations can seem like law and as I said they carry the force of law if otherwise uncontested. Congress (and the judiciary) does allow the Executive branch, by and large, to determine how the enforcements of the law shall be carried out via regulation. All true.
But if a regulation is superceded or circumscribed by law then that law takes immediate precedence. The President can't decide by Executive Order that the law does not apply - which if you believe Bob Woodward it frustrates Donald Trump quite frequently. And Law can be crafted which would circumscribe or limit what Executive Orders can do, secret or not. When you say "secret", that does not mean nobody in opposition is in the know about it. It can in fact mean opposition lawyers may learn exactly what those regulations say - if the lawyers have the security clearance and are willing to be bound by it. It may be inspected and at the worst case a judge may demand to see it for him or herself and make a ruling from there.
This is VERY different from "No, you don't know who the judge was who ordered it and you do not have to know and neither you nor any opposing counsel will be allowed to learn what the crime against you is - you're just guilty." The system may not be right, nor perfect, but it is NOT a "secret court" or "secret law" as that has been implied in the past.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 06 2018, @07:25PM (7 children)
Not that different at all. A regulation which requires a security clearance to learn is by definition a secret regulation. And being tried in a court where one needs a security clearance in order to even know the trial exists? That's a secret court. Such a system should be illegal.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday December 06 2018, @11:17PM (6 children)
Being tried in a court where one needs a security clearance in order to even know the trial exists is indeed a secret court. That's not what's under question here. We KNOW the proceeding exists - we have the news story. The trial isn't secret. The law isn't secret. The regulations (and evidence itself) may be, but those regulations do have to conform to the public body of law. I don't like secret regulations, but I can accept for the sake of argument that it may be bad for those "genuinely" targeted by those regulations should not necessarily have knowledge of it. Any more than a mob boss or crooked politician should be informed that he or she has a sealed wiretap order against him or her. So far it reads like the court is indeed authorized to question the regulations. So what do you mean by a secret trial?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 07 2018, @12:34AM (5 children)
Actually, it is one of the problems here.
That's only after an FOIA request. We wouldn't have known otherwise. That leads to the obvious point. What other court activities, including trials, are we not hearing about?
If we don't KNOW those regulations conform, then how do we determine they conform? It's a shell game with the pea assumed to be under the shell. But will it be there when we finally get a chance to look?
And yet, there's been all sorts of games played with this (including spying on Trump's campaign [floridatoday.com]). That link outlines a really sloppy justification for a warrant. And we have a long history of such shenanigans.
"is indeed authorized to question" != questioned. I think this story [dailydot.com] is enlightening.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday December 07 2018, @04:53PM (4 children)
Aside from the issue of military tribunals for those at Gitmo, show me one place where a "secret trial" occurred. (And sophistry that you wouldn't know about it because it's secret doesn't count). Extraordinary renditions occur, court records are sealed for proper reasons frequently. Warrants are issued which the subject do not know about. None of these are secret trials.
No, you can speculate all you want to. You're guessing without proof of anything. What about the secret Martian base on the far side of the Moon that is broadcasting brain control rays at Trump, Kim Jong-un, and Nancy Pelosi? Prove that those don't exist!
And the point is that FOIA requests DO exist. And members of Congress are indeed read into these programs. And people like Edward Snowden exist, who really should be pardoned. And finally, this is all different from what Secret Courts are where people are Disappeared and Never to Be Seen Again but a judiciary is involved, or a government officially executes a sentence (think Kashoggi).
How do YOU know what even public regulations actually do in practice if you aren't following around the government employees making sure they do them? Where's your law degree that allows you to interpret those regulations? The answers are that you trust that the lawyer-reporter-judge-Congress-President-suit filer are in the know, the same as with public laws. And yes, it will be there when the people with appropriate clearance - who do NOT have to be sympathetic, only cleared - are read into them. I won't say that destruction of records can't occur, but it is becoming harder to make these things happen outside the direct influence of the TLA's internally. EO's are West Wing documents - show me the last time since Nixon's 18 minutes that critical West Wing documentation was destroyed, let alone an EO. I await a time when, because all being paid for is digital storage, that destruction of records are no longer permitted whatsoever. Though I will give you points that Trump is doing his damndest to pull security credentials away from people because he equates loyalty to the country with loyalty to him personally, and his has been called out on the carpet for it and will continue to be so. That's not something any President has dared do before, and it is wrong.
Depends on what source you want to believe - "sloppy" is a subjective value judgment. And doesn't address that there are indeed legitimate reasons to seal warrants. That an allegation comes from an opposite political party member does not constitute poison fruit any more than a narc using a drug user or trafficker as a source in a warrant. Motive to poison isn't poison in and of itself. And the article you cite is just as partisan as any.
If there was any crime (beyond those who've plead guilty in his Administration - giving credence that there WAS in fact something to find there), perhaps it was when Trump started broadcasting from the rooftops information that was handed to him in confidence about members of his staff - and the bombast couldn't even get that information right.
I used to think that. Now I'm not sure. Because I've also read that such warrants are not just submitted to the court, the way they would be in other venues. "Here's my warrant judge - approve it or deny it!" Instead drafts of the warrants are pre-submitted for review. Thus, those that have no standing are never officially submitted to the judge for signature. That is aside from since the procedure is different then a different standard might be used to actually target it. Metaphorically this measure is counting the number of cars that rolled off the assembly line, where the rest of the system is measured by the number of cars that had defects in manufacturing.
And, of course, if we don't trust the elected officials who are authorized to question such information, there's a simple remedy for that. That we won't collectively do so... isn't that our fault as the public?
These things aside, you still get
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 07 2018, @05:54PM (3 children)
Well, there are those military tribunals as you so helpfully provided. And yes, if there are other secret trials going on, you're not going to hear about them.
Do all 340 million citizens in the US need to follow each and every "public" regulation? Plus, I don't trust them to follow regulation that is being created faster than it can be read. Nor should you.
And? We still know there are problems with the system that only came out when Snowden leaked the details. Why again should we trust a system that only fixes problems in their secret court system when someone commits a felony and brings the problems to light?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday December 07 2018, @11:14PM (2 children)
Yep. Military tribunals... as in, military action, not judicial, even if they follow rules of jurisprudence. And no, I don't agree with them. And yet we know about them. We know a lot about many of the defendants. But I'm not defending them - I am holding them up as examples by which U.S. Citizens should not be judged and would agree that those persons held by them should indeed either be released back to their home countries or tried in open court.
Now, you'll share with me which U.S. Citizens have gone through secret trials on account of regulatory orders not in public view? Or even those in public view?
Well, how else will you know if regulations are being followed if you personally are not aware of all of them?
Yep. And my point is that here's better proof than any about whether there exist secret regulations which are actually illegal: People will leak, even at cost to themselves. It is sad that it might take that, but there it is.
By the way, as much as I admire Snowden... what actually illegal actions did he uncover again? As in, what public laws have now conclusively proven to have been broken by his revelations? He gave the information up, so we should certainly be able to figure out which public laws have been broken by the conduct, right?
Now, as to why I'd trust a government that does these things.... Because you haven't provided a better answer yet, only criticized what's currently going on with speculation. Please do enlighten me as to how you would protect national security without secrets? Or enable legitimate uses of intelligence gathering without ever taking in communications of U.S. citizens? My guess is that you cannot. Because better brains than you or I - and you do indeed have a great brain - have tried. But we can keep trying. Show me first, though, how the system gets better before I'll support ripping down what we've got now.
Back at you: Why are you willing to tear down a system without showing what will replace it? In my experience that leads to worse outcomes.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 08 2018, @01:24AM (1 child)
I suggest the regular court system as the replacement.
A better answer - don't fund those things and you don't have to worry about what they're doing.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday December 13 2018, @07:35PM
So you'd rather have electronic surveillance to be the purview of any judge anywhere in the country instead of a select few, centralized in a way that Congress can directly monitor. It wouldn't change that every such request would be sealed as classified/confidential - they would be. I disagree that this would be preferable. So did the Church committee when they recommended the FISC system be created because it's easier to monitor one central court and 11 judges than 673 district court judges and if one district court judge would refuse then they could shop it on to the next one.
No, you'd have to worry about every single court in the country being used as an unethical/immoral/illegal outlet for surveillance. Or if you're suggesting that America shouldn't gather intelligence... interesting notion and will not occur short of armed revolt. Because of that, it's more a question of control and not whether or not such tools would be used. They will be. So let's try and find something that might actually work. Like the current system, imperfect as it is.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @09:12PM (8 children)
You keep stating the obvious in order avoid engaging with the point - secrecy around regulations makes it practically impossible for them to ever be superseded by new laws. No person is ever convicted for violating a regulation, these are administrative laws, not criminal laws.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday December 06 2018, @11:31PM (6 children)
No, I keep stating the obvious because people keep wanting to deny the obvious. Secrecy certainly does not make regulations impossible to be superceded. One can in fact lay out the law by which any regulations - secret or not - must be held to. And what I am saying is that there are those who in the opposition political party who are entitled to know those regulations - secret or not. It's called the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence. They can in fact craft regulation that pulls the teeth of any executive order if they feel the need it should be done. They themselves can bring action if they really felt it vital to security - but that's not the way they work. And my understanding is that the actors in the TLAs do indeed care very much that they engage in legal behavior. Because the individuals who work there do NOT want to be held responsible either civilly or criminally for conduct authorized by regulation that turns out to be in fact illegal to the public law.
And again: You have a Freedom of Information challenge. A court is indeed looking into the matter. In a police state or society which does not follow rule of law an ACLU wouldn't be allowed to exist and certainly wouldn't have been allowed to bring this matter to court. It is FAR from academic as a distinction.
This sig for rent.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 07 2018, @11:33AM
Hey! Can you read? Do you know what "practically" means? Or how about "frustrates?" I think you do. Because you deliberately left out those words so that you could argue with a strawman instead of engaging with the actual point. Congratulations on that debate tactic, its a surefire way to make an unassailable argument. Because when nobody is actually arguing the other side of your strawman, you win by default. Yay for you!!!!!! Boo for reality. Muhguh my man, muhguhhhhhhh!!!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 07 2018, @06:15PM (4 children)
Not legally. You don't know which laws are followed and which ones ignored, if you don't have information about the secret activities.
"Are entitled to know" != know. It's interesting how much weasel-speak there is in your posts.
Contrary to your "understanding", we have numerous instances where illegal, widespread activity was only stopped (or perhaps more accurately, driven underground for a time) because the perpetrators got caught.
For now, that is the case. Let us keep in mind that if it takes numerous FOIA challenges and years to root out some misdeeds, then it's a poor tool for keeping tyranny at bay.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday December 07 2018, @11:17PM (3 children)
And you don't know which laws are followed and which ones ignored, you personally, even if you did have information. Aside from your personally being not aware of things there is a greater imperative. You don't have to know what's being broken to set out laws against the conduct. And you may not like what I said below, but you're incredibly naive if you think that widespread illegal action could be taken as a matter of policy without the political opposition finding out and making holy hell out of it. Not in this hyper-partisan atmosphere.
And it's amazing how much black-and-whiteness is in yours when we live in a world of grays. Plus how much you rampantly speculate without any evidence to back you up. But good, I'm glad you don't dispute that there are those - on both sides of the political aisle - who are charged with knowing. And that you have no evidence that they're not aware. Just because you don't know doesn't mean they don't, right? Just because you aren't personally handed compartmented information or classified regulations doesn't mean that an independent court can not or will not judicially review it.
Wait, how did the perpetrators get caught if it was all secret?
For now is what we're worried about, isn't it? Or are you worried about the bogeymen out there in the future? Or think that past misdeeds will never be learned of? Though I will acknowledge that great vigilance is required to keep things this way. Which is why we are where we are now and why we have this story as an example of exactly that.
What was the problem again?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 08 2018, @02:10AM (2 children)
Yet more weasel-speech. You have yet to state why the US needs this.
It varies. COINTELPRO [wikipedia.org] (FBI tool for infiltrating dissident groups) was revealed when someone burgled an FBI office. ECHELON [wikipedia.org] (a mass surveillance system, collecting information from telephone networks and other channels of the "Five Eyes" countries) was revealed by a few ex-employees of various intelligence agencies. Snowden revealed PRISM [wikipedia.org] (a mass internet surveillance system operated by the NSA) as part of his leaks. These programs were operating for years or longer before they were revealed.
We also have goofy stuff like the CIA being involved in the drug trade (including selling heroin [wikipedia.org] to US soldiers serving in Vietnam during the second phase of the war (between North and South Vietnam). Secrecy enabled this all to go on.
Finally, a number of these projects kept going in a different form after they were discovered. Secrecy allowed that to happen.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday December 13 2018, @08:00PM (1 child)
The system exists. It is upon you to justify why the US does not need this. But if you're suggesting that anything less than the world is black or white is weasel speech, we'll just have to agree to disagree. There will be no way to agree.
So, when such things exist they are discovered, by legal or extralegal means. The perpetrators got caught despite the measures of "secrecy" taken. Whether they actually broke any law and/or were or weren't prosecuted for that is a different question and only tangentially impinges upon the notion of secrecy. The public can indeed hold such people responsible, if we really wanted to. Failure to do so, however, has nothing to do with "secrecy."
It would be a lovely rainbow-colored world if secrecy did not exist, either as a concept or as a nation. It would be interesting to discover if we would be better or worse off as a nation without the ability to gather intelligence, and try to be proactive as a country without it. But that is not going to occur, whether or not you or I wish it to be so. There will be secrets, and intelligence, and spying. I'd much rather there be some method of regulation of it. These should be the lessons learned from Gitmo, COINTELPRO, MKULTRA, LOVEINT, and other forms of abuse of the system. Place such things under control rather than wishing them away, and provide outlets for addressing when they go bad. But since you won't advance a better method for obtaining control than "just say no," then I guess I have to accept what we currently have as the best possible option.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 14 2018, @05:01AM
Ok. With secret courts, secret rules, and secret breaking of the law, we can't have a free society in the long term. The powerful parties who do this, will simply get worse and worse, until the laws and such are no longer capable of restraining them.
The fact that you didn't even get the problem here implies a staggering level of ignorance. Imagine this were murders. It would be disastrous to not even know that murders are going on for many years (sometimes never learning at all), much less more often than not only catching murderers through very illegal tactics by insiders working with the murderers.
You're missing the excluded middle here. We can have fair, public trials without revealing all our national secrets. We can have intelligence and law enforcement agencies capable of protecting our interests without needing to siphon everyone's personal secrets or snooping on everyone's communications.
Then why are you so disinterested in getting that method of regulation? The only way meaningful regulation happens is if misdeeds are made public. That's it.
Defunding abuses of power is not merely saying "no" nor is it a less "best possible" option than allowing these abuses to fester, at best poorly checked.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday December 06 2018, @11:33PM
One correction: The Senate and House can craft bills which become law that regulate the regulations. (If that wasn't obvious....)
This sig for rent.