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Mixed News on Wiretapping from 9th Circuit US Court
abb3w writes "The bad news: the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled (pdf) that the Al-Haramain lawyers may not submit into evidence their recollections of the top secret document handed to them detailing the warrantless electronic scrutiny they received. 'Once properly invoked and judicially blessed, the state secrets privilege is not a half-way proposition.' The good news: they have declined to answer and directed the lower court to consider whether 'FISA preempts the common law state secrets privilege' with respect to the underlying nature of the program itself ... which also keeps alive hopes for the EFF and ACLU to make those responsible answer for their actions."
a half-way proposition: wtf? Don't they mean a one-way proposition?
proud caffeine whore
I believe that when the Legislature addresses some domain which had been prior subject to common-law, the legislation takes precedence.
e.g.: Statutory Marriage v. Common Law Marriage.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
If the government can't violate everyone's civil rights with complete impunity then the terrorist will win. We don't want the terrorist to win, otherwise they would take away all of our rights and freedom! See, we have to give up our freedom to keep it! I love big brother. He will protect me from the bad people, right?
Diplomacy is the art of saying, 'Nice doggie!' till you can find a rock.-- Wynn Catlin
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
That's how slow this thread is moving.
It seems like it's a race to see if the Ninth can rule definitively on the culpability of the telcos (AT&T in particular) before the Congress rewards the telcos (and by implication the Bush Administration) with immunity.
:-)
There remains the question of whether the SCOTUS will overturn any pro-citizenry ruling the Ninth makes anyway.
But the more that comes out before the Ninth, the harder it will be for Congress/SCOTUS to completely immunize the telcos and the White House.
I hope the clerks in the Ninth make sure the judges don't choose this month to switch to decaf! (There's an amusingly twisted Ninth-Circuit-judges-meet-Lloyd-Bridges-from-Airplane! visual in there somewhere....)
Keep believing the right things will happen and act accordingly.
Bad pun, I know. Being a paranoid person..( from back in the day when my friends and I would make up all kinds of code words for trying to score a doobie over the phone ) Anything you do or say has the potential to be heard by anyone else with the knowledge or technology to do so. But does the Gov't care about some teenagers trying to get some dope, or some 30-something running a port scan on his neighbor from his moms basement? ( no offence slashdotters ). No matter what you do, why not just expect it to be listened to? Because it is.
"A gentleman never strikes a lady with his hat on." - Fred Allen
People will do whatever they can get away with. If you don't like it, then stop them.
I would say that what you classify as bad news is actually good news and what you classify as good news is only so-so news...
Who would have thunk that the 9th circuit court of liberalism and comunism would come out with such a decision?
Oh, by the way, do you guys actually support terrorism???
Using the Patriot Act and various new found powers to take down rank and file criminals like drug dealers, copyright violators, or peaceful protestors and what have you? Obnoxious, un-American, illegal.
But using these powers to go after terrorist scum threatening our national security? Go at it, boys - take the gloves off. Nuke those motherfuckers.
I've never really been comfortable with the claim of "State Secrets" being used as it is in courts. I totally agree with not releasing information that should be kept under wraps for whatever reason, but don't like that it can be used as a way to cover up malfeasence either.
In any decently-run system, a claim of secrecy should be honored, but only as a stipulation that the opposing side's claims are true and accurate. In other words, a default judgement against the government in that case.
Justice should be blind, but not deaf nor dumb.
FunWithKnives' reply is hardly "Insightful". While I agree with his sentiments vis-a-vis the loose paraphrase of the New Hampshire state motto, he missed the Big Huge Sign(tm) in the post "Big Brother is my friend" that said "Parody". The relevant book is 1984. The author is George Orwell.
For extra credit, please compare and contrast the government as described in 1984 with one of the following:
1) the current Bush Administration or
2) the next administration if Giuliani wins
3) the next administration if Clinton wins
Please note that in each the administration's policies will correlate to the frequently neo(conservative|liberal) beliefs of the individuals key advisers rather than the positions being posited during the election campaign (e.g. the marketing and sales effort). Since your choice of administration (1, 2 and 3) will make minimal difference in the major points you can explore, please be detailed in your analysis. Bonus points for black humor and obscure British comedy references.
the clock on the wall says 4 til 7
Refusing to permit information into the court denies the plaintif due process. So let's admit any state secret, with the understanding that someone has to do time for it's release to the world. If the plaintif loses the case, then he goes to a criminal trial for having forced the state to reveal secrets. If the defendant loses, then he goes on trial.
So when a secret is revealed, someone does time for it. This would compel all government bureaucrats who aree in charge of secret projects to make sure that those projects do not get out of hand.
Interesting. It might scare people from starting a case if they're not sure their evidence will be sufficient. On the other hand, it might be a good thing to make sure that the risks of revealing secrets are only taken when someone's sure enough of their position to stake their liberty on it.
I'd like to hear a retired intelligence worker's (or a lawyer's) thoughts on this.
This is not a signature.
It's not bad news, it's good news. If the Al-Haramain lawyers were allowed to use their "recollections", they could say anything, and the only effective defense the govt would have would be to produce the documents and thus reveal state secrets.
All that aside, neither the govt nor the Al-Haramain lawyers actually want the top secret documents revealed. The govt because the information is top secret and would harm ongoing investigations; the Al-Haramain lawyers because even though the documents may prove standing the govt illegally wire-tapped them, would also show Al-Haramain's guilt in funding world-wide terrorism. Remember, copies of these documents were sent to Al-Haramain in Saudi Arabia - they could have been released already with no legal consequence by Al-Haramain in Saudi Arabia.
What Al-Haramain really wants is for the federal courts to restrict wire-tapping - any wire-tapping - as much as possible. Why? Take a wild guess.
Here is the best source for details about this conflict and Al-Haramain terrorism links.
http://www.zombietime.com/al-haramain_surveillance/
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
Under the 5th amendment, you have the right not to testify against yourself. You can decline to answer questions. You can't order that the prosecutor hand back all the evidence he has collected about the case, and never speak of the details under penalty of imprisonment. That's just a wee bit more broad sweeping. And, it's a very effective way for a corrupt government to sweep away any accountability for even the most blatantly illegal activities. And guess what! You can't say anything about it, unless you want to go to jail for the rest of your life!
d) Don't do anything - let extremely dangerous men go free because being forced to reveal the information would be even more damaging
Is the correct answer. In the absence of a trial and the admission of evidence to open court, the state has not proved that the man involved is actually extremely dangerous. The government cannot have it both ways. If it "knows" the guy is dangerous, then it can bring him or her to trial.
The best way to fight terrorism, is with terrorism. Yes, terrorism is an act of war. The best analog of terrorism is the state sponsored piracy of western nations in the days of sail. All the nations practiced piracy as a means to fight that were short of war. Civilian ships, merchant vessels, were the targets of plunder and destruction. It seems that the way to handle terrorists then, in an era where all the nations support them, or are too weak to prevent terrorists, then, we have to have terrorists ourselves, and engage in tit for tat terrorism with probable enemies.
Instead of invading countries with the US Marines and US Army, we instead have our own Uncle Sam Brigade to fight the Al Quds Brigades, our Bedrock to fight their "Base". The USA would deny it funds the terrorist organizations, but, if Al Qaeda hit an American target, then, the Uncle Sam Brigade would in turn blow up an Islamic religious site, or perhaps steal an oil tanker or two. There are people in American Prisons that could, no doubt, be recruited for this work.
This is my sig.
Hate to see the ACLU and the EFF on the same side of the same suit, given how much I hate one of them, and adore the other.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
First: This is the 9th circuit. They are the most overturned court in the country, so nobody on either side of the issue should presume this is the final result.
Second: If you think of this ruling as bad news, let's try a simple thought experiment... The RIAA drags you into court and wants to introduce as evidence their "recollections" of documents that said what you did on the internet, what files you downloaded, and what files you shared. Should this be allowed? Should you have to answer this by providing an complete an accurate record of your online activities and the files on your system? (in other words: should the threat of "recollection" evidence be a tool that can be used to force you to give-up evidence you would not otherwise have to produce?)
I do not like the idea of government using secret evidence, but I also do not want any court making it worse by allowing in "recollections" of documents. You do not fix the problem of secret evidence which cannot be examined by allowing recollected evidence which cannot be examined. Why not just skip a few steps and start using fortune tellers and ouija boards for evidence?
[quote:] "It's not bad news, it's good news." [comments about it:] Right! Never mind which one the writer thinks is good/bad! I realize this is not wikipedia (see NPOV), but how hard would it have been, to use some more neutral terminology, (in the original, not the immediate parent here) like, "on the one hand..." and "then again, on the other hand..."? This would have been an alternative to framing it as "The bad news: ..." and then "The good news: ...";
one way seems to insist on revealing (and almost, emphasizing)
which side the writer is on;
while the "NPOV" approach (by contrast) tries to just
emphasize reporting what has happened (the "news"),
and tends to leave it up to the
reader to figure out (or already know, or misinterpret it /slash,
get it wrong... whatever)
what is true, and what to believe, what to think, what to
consider interesting, etc.
If it's an idea whose time has come, then I don't care who
it is that reports (conveys) it; and I don't care what his/her
opinions are. Well, OK, I might care to try to determine whether
the reporter is someone who'd be tempted to lie just to
score a point, but I mean, if we had some kind of "trust but
verify" possibility - which IMHO exists more today (with the
internet, and blogs, and ATMs and libraries... etc.)
than it did 10 or 20 generations ago - then I'd prefer
"just the facts").
Just my 0.02... from Mike Schwartz Glendale, AZ.
Funny how I don't consider it "bad" news that lawyers aren't allowed to divulge classified information...Maybe it's just me, but "news" should not reported as "good" or "bad", because then it is no longer news.
The charity's lawyers still have copies of the document stored in the middle east. They know exactly what the document says to the exact number of recorded calls, when they were, & how long. They initially presented the original copy to the court, which was then reclaimed by the govt & declared 'classified' after being entered into the record. However, the copies sent to the charity's lawyers in the middle east still have copies of the document.
So in another declaration of stupidity, the US govt is declaring state secrets to avoid getting their asses handed to them in court, over a document that they have absolutely no control over. With a phone call, the charity can have that document on the internet - better, there's nothing the US govt can say about it. Since the document is already out of the country, the US govt cannot exert any form of pressure to have it returned. Any attempt at exerting that kind of pressure is almost certain to see the whole document released.
Personally, I believe that Bush is violating the precept of state secret in that he is using it to forestall the lawsuits to avoid the humiliation of having been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. From the beginning, it's been clear that that is not an appropriate usage of the state secrets claim. I am wondering if the next president will review these claims of state secrets & void them - just to taint Bush & the republican party.
The modern Republican male role model in America
Love the 2008 RNCC Convention logo, BTW...
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
Suspension of Habeas Corpus is clearly identified in the Constitution as being a power of the Legislative Branch, not the Executive Branch. It was an unconstitutional overreach of Executive power from the git.
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron