FBI Files a "Secret Justification" For Gag Order

An anonymous reader notes a story up at Ars on the FBI's continuing penchant for secrecy. "Clearly, the FBI isn't ready to give up its Bush-era secrecy addition just yet. ...in the case of Doe v. Holder, the FBI is carrying out a secret investigation using secret guidelines on what is and is not constitutional, and as part of that investigation they've compelled the secrecy of a service provider and are using a secret justification to argue that nobody's First Amendment rights are being violated."

Comments

What's with

[Anonymous Coward]

the "FBI isn't ready to give up its Bush-era secrecy addition" bullshit? Quit blaming institutional behavior - in this case Holder - on Bush! If Obama wanted it to end it would end, right? SSDD!

Bush-era?

[gandhi_2]

Like government secrecy started and ended with Bush?

Re:Bush-era?

[mdm-adph]

Yes, it's a bit facetious to say "Bush-era" when talking about all government secrecy -- but you have to admit it was taken to all new levels after 9/11, if for no other reason than the fact that no one was willing to stop them for a while at risk of looking "unpatriotic."

Re:Bush-era?

[Sponge Bath]

The NSL at the heart of this case was issued while Bush was in office. The Patriot Act (with the NSL provisions) was signed into law by Bush. I don't think it is unfair to mention Bush in this context.

Re:Bush-era?

[Belisarivs]

All new levels? It's a well known fact that the NSA used to collect all international telegraph traffic from the major telecoms for decades after WWII under the argument of national security, and killed all inquiries into the fact using that argument. And let's not forget that the FBI was run by Hoover, who wasn't exactly the most circumspect person when it came to individual liberties. I really don't think that Bush was any more secret than most of the administrations of the 20th century up until the Church committee. The only real difference is the amount of information that's available to the general public.

Re:Bush-era?

[MegaMahr]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act/The Patriot Act was supported 98-1 in it's senate vote at the time it was passed. The only senator who voted against it was Russ Feingold - D (Wis). It was vastly inferior to what the Bush administration had asked for, and this pissed Bush off. As I keep saying to all the people blasting Obama for making the economy worse (and trust me I did not vote for him)the president signs the bills into law, but the 535 members of congress draft them, ratify them, and present them for signature. If you are so upset with it, I'd suggest that you blame them.

Re:Bush-era?

[radtea]

the 535 members of congress draft them, ratify them, and present them for signature. If you are so upset with it, I'd suggest that you blame them.

Congress has an approval rating that sometimes dips into the single digits, and never gets far above them. Congress as an incumbent return rate of well over 80% and never drops significantly below it.

Any student of economics who was looking at a product with a 10% approval rating and 80+% customer loyalty would immediately suspect some kind of serious market interference. Can you imagine a car that almost everyone hated but that everyone still kept on buying, year after year, model after model?

"Yeah, I bought a 2008 Republican and it totally sucked. Unresponsive handling, fuel hog, huge maintenance costs and the financing just about killed me."

"So, you gonna buy something else this year?"

"Naw, I figure since the 2008 is so bad the 2010 is bound to be even worse, so I'm going to get it and see."

What is wrong with this picture? Political choices are made in a market-like context, and almost everyone hates almost everything on offer in that market, yet no one is able to crack the barriers to entry.

As with many problems in modern democracies, this appears to be a largely American problem. In Canada we generate new political parties every few decades (they start off regional, usually in the West, like the Social Credit, CCF and Reform, and then go national, sometimes forming governments--our current federal government is the Reform Party under a false name.) Britain manages to turn over the established parties once a century of so, having killed the Liberals in favour of Labour in the first half of the 20th century, and now the LibDems are up-and-coming today. In Europe the democracies are so young it's hard to draw comparisons, but the American one-Party, two-wings system is so strongly entrenched that despite almost universal dissatisfaction with the product, everyone keeps buying it.

Gerrymandering is an important feature in this system, by which state parties set electoral boundaries, and incumbents can be substantially protected by the two wings of the Party in this way. That means they don't have to worry much about voters. Likewise, the role of the Party in voter registration is probably a significant barrier to a second party forming and becoming competitive.

The US needs an arms-length electoral body like Elections Canada to take the Party out of the electoral process. Unfortunately, that would require the Party leadership to approve of it, which isn't about to happen.

Damn

[Andr T.]

They will never learn!

Re:What?

[Jurily]

Their plan is working.

Existential rights

[goffster]

If a right is violated, and no one can talk about it,
then it must not have happened.

Re:Existential rights

[causality]

If a right is violated, and no one can talk about it, then it must not have happened.

Indeed, and it's scary how that seems to be the point. Also from the fine summary:

and as part of that investigation they've compelled the secrecy of a service provider

If that provider had any sort of decency or respect for this country, they would hold a press conference or equivalent and make sure everybody knew all about this shady deal. That kind of courage and good priorities are unfortunately quite rare. There's a lot of cheap talk about "patriotism" but that is what a real patriot would do. Of course I use that definition (that I wish I could attribute right now) which goes "a patriot supports his country all of the time, and his government only when it deserves it." These days, that would mean refusing to support the government most (or all) of the time.

Makes me wonder how many cases the FBI handles that have nothing to do with an activitiy which crosses state lines or otherwise could not be handled on the local and state level ...

Re:Existential rights

[causality]

Because the FBI are just a gaggle of incompetent Catholic and Mormon scumbags yearning for the good ol' days of the inquisition. That's what happens when little god-fearing geeks who watched too many cop shows as children grow up to do their god's bidding using any means possible. And the motherfuckers can't even catch any real crooks.

This quite rightly deserves the "Flamebait" mod it received. Having said that, I still want to try and add something useful. I think your sentiment is accurate but your target is not.

There is indeed a religious element to this, but it's not the one you have identified. Statism is what you're dealing with here, which is the belief that the State as represented by the government needs to have powers expanded and its interests furthered at all costs. It follows that anytime there is a conflict of interests between the State and the citizenry, the State should prevail at the expense of the citizenry. Otherwise, statism is very much a religion. What's hard to understand and even harder to relate to is the derived concept that anything which increases state power is "morally right" and "good" no matter how much real harm it does. In the religion of statism, the government is "God" and can do no wrong, and neither can "God's" servants.

Both major political parties are faithful members of this religion. That's why neither of them is making any serious efforts to reduce the size and power of the federal government. No deficit is large enough to change this and no resemblance to the methods of various 20th century dictatorships is strong enough to give them pause. The mainstream news media is probably the single biggest part of the problem.

Re:What?

[DrLang21]

It's simple. Secret top secret meetings are being held... secretly.

If I might quote the lord...

[Space cowboy]

Lord Hewit: "... it is not merely of some importance but is of fundamental importance, that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done."

Nothing much has happened to change that, apart from government organisations wanting more power, and the governed giving it to them. RIP Justice, it was kinda cool while you were around...

Simon.

Power once given...

[tnk1]

This only goes to show what everyone else already knows. If you give the government powers, it will continue to use them no matter what party is in power at the time.

This isn't a partisan issue, except in that those who suggest that giving government more power through secret wiretaps, or special prison camps, or government bailouts or nationalized health care are making the problem worse. It doesn't matter that this is a "Bush-era" innovation as much as it was an innovation to begin with. We don't call Social Security a "Roosevelt-era" initiative (at least not anymore), it's just accepted that it is there. The same thing will happen with most powers granted to the government when it tries to "help us" by taking care of things for us. Eventually, unless this is overturned, it will go the same way, but wouldn't you think that the Obama Administration, as the Anti-Bush, wouldn't have been the best chance we had to get rid of these? Yet we are disappointed, but I think we shouldn't be surprised.

I don't consider the government to be "the enemy" like some people do, but I think that any entity which develops too much power and gains responsibility in too many areas is bound to become grossly inefficient at best, and quite possibly dangerous to liberty. We are abdicating our responsibilities and rights in order to have security, be it from terrorists or from being uninsured. And we all know what people get when they trade liberty for security: neither.

Re:The FBI?

[afabbro]

The FBI is institutionally one of the least efficient and bureaucratic law enforcement agencies in the country.

While simultaneously being one of the best law enforcement agencies in the world. Seriously - who would you compare to them?

They're pumping billions into "modernization" efforts, but they still file their cases largely in paper format, use fax machines instead of e-mail, and "IT" is what they say happens in the men's room after 5pm.

No doubt you thought that was a cute quote and copy-pasted it. But alas, it's completely wrong. The recent Sentinel problems were an upgrade/modernization of the existing electronic case files. The Bureau is computerized. Not as sleekly or as efficiently as they'd like (which is why there's a big government contract working on it), but you make it sound like they're still thumbing through index cards. And yes, they use email.

In the 60s, the FBI was busy snapping pictures of protesters... and at the same time devoting forensic resources to finding out who (or rather, what) crapped on J. Edgar Hoover's front porch. You might have heard of him--he had a real temper, hated communists, and had a garter belt and fishnet fetish.

Please provide some proof that Hoover was a cross-dresser other than Anthony Summers' discredited book. That's the only source for this accusation.

As to hating communists - God bless the man.

Re:Bush era?

[endianx]

It's funny. Everybody uses that same excuse. It has become self-fulfilling. Most people I know don't really like the Republican or Democrat platforms, but they vote for them because they think those are the only credible options. The end result being that those are indeed the only credible options. If people would vote for who they really wanted, it wouldn't be a problem.

I voted 3rd party in 2008. Was my vote wasted? Well, if I had voted for Obama or McCain...we'd still have ended up with Obama or McCain - so also a wasted vote.

Stop voting for the lesser of two evils and vote for someone who isn't evil.

Re:What?

[Hatta]

Under her administration as governor, Alaska has (finally!!!) started cleaning house.

What else would you expect from Alaska's first female governor?