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Court Orders Dismissal of US Wiretapping Lawsuit
jcatcw writes with a link to a ComputerWorld article about the dismissal of a case against the NSA over the wiretapping program revealed last year. The case was brought by the ACLU. A three-judge panel in the Sixth Circuit has sent the case back down to District court for ultimate dismissal. "The appeals court decision leaves opponents of the NSA program in a difficult position, said Jim Dempsey, policy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group that has opposed the program. The appeals court ruled that the plaintiffs could not sue because they can't prove they were affected by the program, and at the same time, ruled that details about the program, including who was targeted, are state secrets."
You know a good lawyer will tell you that in the end the truth will prevail, as corny as it sounds. This irrational decision will stand until the paperwork is filled for higher appeal. I am not sure where the appeal process will take them and I am sure there are lawyers on this board who will tell us, but I still have faith in the process even though it seems to be falling short right now.
...is the standing rulings that have collectively made it law that taxpayer participation (i.e. by paying taxes) in a program is insufficient standing for challenging that program. Is there a lawyer in the house that can explain why if I pay for something that doesn't give me the standing to complain about it? A rational explanation escapes me, but IANAL...
I mean, I can *kind of* see that if taxpayer participation was enough, then the courts would be come much busier with complaints about government spending and programs (perhaps paralyzingly so), but there must be a better way than just excluding the entire class as lacking standing.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Actually, if they go through their records -- they might be able to determine if they are affected... http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/protest/30298prs200 70628.html As anyone been denied enterence to a Bush actvity after sending email or talking on the phone?
Fortunately, the decision can be appealed. No guarantee that would do any good. Since we're in election season, judges are standing by their political affiliations on all sides. Even if the decision was favorable to the plaintiffs, though, there's no reason to believe that it'll do any good. How many Republican senators are going to want to look weak on national security right now? That means even if the matter does stay in the courts, it is very unlikely anything will happen before late in November 2008. Of course, if it does stay in the courts, the NSA could just plead guilty and have the President issue a full pardon the following day, rescinding the finding and penalties exacted.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Two good reasons I can think of at the moment:
/aren't/ they'll be more agressive in their interactions and get things done faster, with possibly better organization.
If people know they are being spied on an tapped, they'll take fewer risks and give less away.
Likewise, if they know they
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Maybe the question is naive and the game of chess is obvious to everyone else. The submission says this ruling puts the ACLU in a difficult position. They are not permitted to know whether they are affected by the program or not. Perhaps the difficulty of the ACLU's current position is an unintended consequence, but that seems unlikely to me. What seems more likely is that the court did this as sort of a gotcha, as in "better luck next time, smart guy." I get this feeling every time I hear a lack-of-standing ruling. I understand that it's a valid concept it just sticks in my craw.
I admit that it's just a vague sense of the way things are in this country that leads me to believe this way. I wouldn't really know how to begin looking for other examples of this legal maneuvering in the recent past (or any past.) Can anyone give me some insight into this or a place to start reading?
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
- Supreme Court Justice Joseph Heller
Good, then they won't have any trouble convicting you of speaking ill of the next democractic president, once criticising the president has been made a capital offense, and they won't have any trouble convicting you of treason for criticizing the law that you can't criticize presidents, an act of treason as well. Rights you give away in relatively good times are not magically granted back to you when the shit really does hit the fan, politically speaking.
It's time for the EFF and some supernerds to entrap the government.
Plant some communications that raise the government's interest enough to show up to investigate. Ensure the communications, once the plot is revealed, would not be judged to be a real threat or significantly illegal otherwise. But make sure it raises ire and causes a response that could not otherwise have been wise to the communications had they not been illegally snooping.
Bonus points if you can make it high profile enough that Cheney cannot absolve himself of knowledge of the details of the trap.
One More:
According to the judgement above, you'd also be creating a list of people who now have the right to sue you.
As it stands, unless they break the "State Secrets" limitation, the government is protected from being held accountable.
In THIS government, accountability is the very last thing they want applied to themselves. As such, I think this, more than those other two arguments, is why they'll never release such a list.
-AC
Apparently in the days of Echelon, there was an actual case where some mom said something along the lines of "Little Tommy bombed at the school play." The automated system flagged her as requiring a case file, and she was investigated and her future calls monitored. In this case, she was innocent, Tommy was innocent (except for bad acting), but the government decided it was worth expending resources to spy on her. Doesn't give me much confidence no matter how you look at it.
Just image what they'd do if you told someone you were going to nuke a tv dinner, pound it down, and crash for the night.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
(I kinda wish they would. At least it'd get it out in the open. But to answer your question as to why -- if it were out in the open, if it were made legal, then they couldn't keep doing it. Catch-22 applies to them as well as us.)
"No reason," wailed the old woman. "No reason."
"What right did they have?"
"Catch-22."
"What?" Yossarian froze in his tracks with fear and alarm and felt hiw while body begin to tingle. "What did you say?"
"Catch-22," the old woman repeated, rocking her head up and down. "Catch-22. Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Yossarian shouted at her in bewildered, furious protest. "How did you know it was Catch-22? Who the hell told you it was Catch-22?"
"The soldiers with the hard white hats a clubs. The girls were crying. 'Did we do anything wrong?' they said. The men said no and pushed them away out the door with the ends of their clubs. 'Then why are you chasing us out?' the girls said. 'Catch-22,' the men said. 'What right do you have?' the girls said. 'Catch-22,' the men said. All they kept saying was 'Catch-22, Catch-22.' What does it mean, Catch-22? What is Catch-22?"
"Didn't they show it to you?" Yossarian demanded, stamping about in ager and distress. "Didn't you even make them read it?"
"They don't have to show us Catch-22," the old woman answered. "The law says they don't have to."
"What law says they don't have to?"
"Catch-22."
as you say, snooping on just my phone calls, no whoop. However they have the computer power to snoop on everyones calls simultaneously, aggregate the data, look for patterns, and it is so secret they 1) can't document abuses 2) can't discipline anyone who abuses it.
eg: if 1000 people call in to the brokers to sell their Haliburton stock at the same time, a flag might instantly pop up on the VP's computer, and automatically sell his stock first. Knowing one persons calls to trade a stock, meaningless, knowing a 1000 insiders did simultaneously, priceless.
Japan was accused of doing stuff like this back in the 70's. eg: The phone Company would automatically take fax's sent or received out of country, and copy them to any interested company's, "in the nations best interest". So if a American executive in japan faxed out a private bid for a contract to his home office, that fax would get to the Japanese business also bidding...
You don't think it will affects you? Business knowing they can't do business inside the US through phones, email, etc. Because they can't trust the privacy of our government...
What?
I don't think that the possibility that one of your conversations might be in a secret NSA database causes you any measurable harm that a court could compensate you for
Leaving aside the psychological harm of knowing your private information is being illegally monitored and even stored by the government, I can think of dozens of ways in which the NSA could abuse that database that would constitute harm.
If they have to ask the NSA whether they have any such records, that in and of itself serves as proof that they were not harmed in any way by the records (if they do exist), since if they were harmed in any way, they would be able to prove that in court.
"If you have to ask your doctor if you have cancer, that in itself serves as proof that you were not harmed any way by cancer (if it does exist)."
Just because you don't (yet) know about the cause of harm done to you, doesn't mean that harm has not been done.
I don't think it's a good idea either to seek to challenge laws in court on the grounds that you paid the taxes that support the program or somesuch.
Okay, now you're really trolling. C'mon. Are you saying (1) that it's not a good idea to challenge laws in court because you paid taxes on the suspect programs and thus acquiesce to them no matter what they are? Or are you saying that (2) being a tax payer does not create legal standing?
If you're saying (1) you're just nuts.
If you're saying (2) I don't think that being a taxpayer is the grounds for standing. It's that they are likely to be illegally wiretapped under what's publicly known about the eavesdropping program. A preponderance of evidence suggests they are being affected by the program, just as a preponderance of evidence might give standing to town members who are getting cancer at statistically high rates against the sludge-dumping chemical plant nearby.
That is trying to place the courts in a role they were never meant to take - of judging the effect of laws.
courts aren't supposed to judge the effects of laws?
The fact is, the legal system and especially the federal judiciary loves to throw out cases based on technicalities such as this one. There are a whole host of judicial doctrines that govern whether or not a case will be heard, such as standing, ripeness, moot issue and political question. Courts always look for sufficient standing to bring a lawsuit; they look to see if the issue is "ripe" (ready to be ruled on); they look to see if the case's outcome would be moot; they refuse to hear cases involving political questions that would unnecessarily pit them against one of the other branches of government. The courts are there to rule on violations of the law (including the Constitution), not presumptive violations as identified by laymen regarding government acts that were based on ostensibly legal grounds. And for a case to succeed, it must pass those crucial judicial tests. Except in certain bright line cases, the courts operate based on the assumption that the actions of the other two branches are lawful. That's why if people are angry about actions of the executive, the primary remedy is usually legislative; the judicial remedy is secondary. (IANAL, but I hold a Political Science degree and took a lot of pre-law as an undergrad.)
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
I think I may have posted this idea once before, so apologies if its familiar, but what about a movement to un-elect the incumbents?
Next time you vote, vote against anyone currently holding office. Keep your party affiliations, if you must, just make sure the old blood is booted out the door. Make it widely known that your reasons for doing so are to refresh the state of the union.
Don't worry about the ones going home; they'll make more money as lobbyists.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Sound familiar?
@HbFyo0$k8 tH!$
1) Show me a single successful attack on US soil since 9/11, or for that matter prior to it
2) Show me a single 'foiled' attack plot since 9/11
3) Show me a single terrorist apprehended here, in the US, who was actively acting to harm anyone
I don't think you can.
There will not be another 9/11, folks. We can lay off the justification complex at any time...
For that matter, was 9/11 even a big deal? We lose twenty times that many people a year to automotive accidents. We lose threehundred times that many people each year to FREAKING MCDONALDS!!!
This just isn't SANE anymore.
What I'd like to know is how is one supposed to challenge a blatantly unconstitutional program when the govt has a monopoly on the evidence needed to show individual harm.
When all else fails, run.
The president has violated his oath to uphold the constitution
Your argument lacks any historical context.
In historical terms, Bush's wiretaps and even Gitmo are positively tame. Washingon shot suspected British spies in his army on sight. Lincoln flat out suspended Habeas Corpus to deal with Confederate spies / terrorists. Wilson basically suspended the constitution for citizens of German descent during World War I, and Roosevelt broke the Constitution in so many ways that it cannot even really be enumerated.
You talk about Bush's "secrecy", well, Roosevelt built the atomic bomb so secretly that his own VP didn't even know about it. Johnson had the government doing all sorts of crazy research projects on people, like the CIA's MK-ULTRA program or giving plutonium to retards.
And, if you want to talk about power grabs, Roosevelt set aside a long time national tradition of only serving two presidential terms to be elected to a third and a fourth, a tradition re-instated into law only by Republican insistence during the Eisenhower years. For that matter, Roosevelt tried to stuff more Supreme Court justices on the court so that he could get a majority of justices to side with him.
Kennedy and Johnson both used the CIA to spy on US citizens in flagrant violation of the CIA's own charter, Nixon used the CIA to spy on everyone and Clinton used the IRS to go after political opponents.
What Bush is doing is far, far more moderate than any of the above.
And similarly, any of the above is far far more moderate than what our enemies do. In Iraq, Al Qaeda, to terrorize a village, will invite a family that needs convincing to "dinner", and then serve them their own son cooked. Or, they will go and blow up your house. If you disagree with them, they will kill your whole family. You talk about the USA's effort to stop free speech, and to this day the government of Iran not only blocks all free speech in its own country, but has a million dollar bounty on the head of Salmon Rushdie, and has vowed to hunt down a couple of cartoonists for daring to draw a picture of Mohammed. You talk about Bush's oppression of woman's rights, but in the middle east, women are routinely stoned to death or whipped for the "serious" crimes of having an extramarital affair. You talk about the poor defendants in Gitmo, and the need for a Jury trial, but when did Al Qaeda in Iraq have a jury trial for the 75 people they blew up today, the 50 yesterday, and so on? Where was the jury trial for the occupants of the north and south towers of the world trade center? Where was the jury trial for the occupants of the lockerbee flight? For Klinghoffer and a host of others assasinated by the PLO? Where's the jury trial for all those "jewish criminals" engaged in the horrible crime of eating bagles in a restaraunt in Jerusalem?
So, yeah, I see your point about how on some level it is wrong that Bush is harrassing an Islamic organization, but after having carefully considering the track record of Islamic organizations, I can only sanely conclude that Bush's wiretapping of them is entirely appropriate. If it makes you feel better, write the law that says: "any foreign funded political organization is subject to wiretap without warrants", and I dare you to find any nation that does not engage in the same.
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