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New Bill Would Declassify FISC Opinions
Trailrunner7 writes "A group of eight senators from both parties have introduced a new bill that would require the attorney general to declassify as many of the rulings of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as possible as a way of bringing into the sunlight much of the law and opinion that guides the government's surveillance efforts. Under the terms of the proposed law, the Justice Department would be required to declassify major FISC opinions as a way to give Americans a view into how the federal government is using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Patriot Act. If the attorney general determines that a specific ruling can't be declassified without endangering national security, he can declassify a summary of it. If even that isn't possible, then the AG would need to explain specifically why the opinion needs to be kept secret."
If even that isn't possible, then the AG would need to explain specifically why the opinion needs to be kept secret.
That's just pathetic. Give them the opportunity to hide their wrongdoings and that's exactly what they will do. The "national security" excuses need to stop.
Check UIDs. I'm COLD FJORD(826450). User COID FJORD(2949869) has impersonated me. Don't confuse us if he trolls you.
This won't change cases that are not brought to the court, which is where most of the sausage is made.
If the attorney general determines that a specific ruling can't be declassified without endangering national security, he can declassify a summary of it. If even that isn't possible, then the AG would need to explain specifically why the opinion needs to be kept secret.
And such explanations would probably look something like this: "Opinion number M-9458985 needs to be kept secret because [blacked-out] which is a very serious allegation that has been confirmed by [blacked-out] and [blacked-out] as well as the following independent intelligence sources: [blacked-out]. If this opinion were to be made public it could easily have the following horrible consequences: [blacked-out]"
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
this is essentially going to apply the bizarre "declassification" regime we currently have to FISA law. its ridiculous. go look, for example, at the Inspector General report on the NSA's Trailblazer/Thinthread programs. It is pages and pages and pages of blacked out paragraphs, with a little number in the margin indicating which Exception to the Freedom of Information law the government used in justifying the blackout.
It is ridiculous beyond ridiculos. These senators are cowards of the highest order.
Their names are out there. Why do you need their addresses? Are you going to pay their families a visit at home? Is that in any way relevant to anything at all?
so long as the government has classified documents they dont need to tell anyone anything.
so long as we have redaction, FOIA doesnt really mean anything
so long as the original requests are sealed, the opinions of a judge or judges are decontextualized and meaningless.
and none of this means anything at all once you learn the FISC never rejected a single request last year.
a normal, functioning state has no need for classification of anything really, but this isnt a normal functioning state. we have the worlds highest incarceration rate, we're guaranteed a brand new war every four years, we run torture camps, execute our own citizens without trial, and somehow react with incredulity when we find out our own citizens are either apathetic to democracy, or leak state secrets about our warcrimes or our domestic spy program.
we are the land of the free, so far as we are free to consume the product, and the home of the brave, so long as its state-sponsored.
Good people go to bed earlier.
A law that makes clear that a person's phone number is a unique identifier, and ALL data relating to it is personal data as defined by the 4th Amendment would probably achieve this - though given the ability of lawyers to find holes, it may be too much to hope for.
We need something more fundamental. Like it never being against the law to disclose information on crimes committed by intelligence agencies, and enforcement of existing laws once those crimes come to light: for example, Keith Alexander needs to be arrested for perjury. Perhaps we could bring back private prosecutions... that would certainly go a long way towards ensuring public officials are not above the law.
This more holistic approach is necessary because the usual suspects (CIA, NSA) and the usual frameworks (FISC) only capture a tiny fraction of what the intelligence community actually engages in. Take the NRO ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office ) for example. It has a comparable budget to the more well known agencies and they were even caught by the CIA to be squirrelling away extra money, presumably to finance black projects. They started in spy satellites but these days they appear to devote a significant portion of the resources towards hacking. They really put the NSA to shame when it comes to blackhat and grayhat activities, though good luck finding anyone to confirm that for you. Let's just say they appear to enjoy inspiring awe and fear in their employees, to the point where though I've met several people who worked for them I had to do a considerable amount of detective work and deduction to figure it out. And even then there was no explicit confirmation I was right, just a wry smile and a "I can neither confirm nor deny..."
And that's just an agency we know about. Like the NSA before it, the NRO used to be secret. And there remain still more secret intelligence agencies today, probably even more fearsome and powerful than the public ones. And if you think these guys go through FISC every time they feel the urge to skim through someone's inbox...
So, back to my original point: what we really need here is a mechanism to permit the discovery and prosecution of people who conceal crimes, both for the original crime and for the act of covering it up by claiming state secrets. Crimes like lying to congress under oath. Or spying on American citizens, without judicial oversight, in ways that would be illegal if a private citizen did it (which does not necessarily apply to PRISM but most certainly applies to other programs.)
What's really sad is he knows no such prosecution is possible (barring journalists offering bribes, for example) yet his impulse is to jail journalists.
The founding fathers had their flaws, but people should kneel to their presience. Imagine the loopholes modern politicians would insert in a constitution to allow themselves trump power over freedom of speech, religion, and so on.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It is important to remember that the people who determine it is OK to do these kinds of things are rendering opinions.
This isn't an actual court, this isn't SCOTUS. This is a bunch of people who work for you, who are already in agreement with what you're trying to do, rendering an opinion than it's okay to do it.
So when Alberto Gonzales gave the opinion that habeus corpus wasn't really a thing ... it was only an opinion, but one which then got used as if it was lawful. It also demonstrated a shocking level of incompetence to be the Attorney General.
Just because you can get a couple of cronies on your legal staff to give you an opinion, that in no way makes it fact. Because if you're appointing cronies who think you can crap all over the Constitutional rights of people, you can get an 'opinion' which authorizes pretty much anything.
If you put a bunch of authoritarian pricks in a room and ask them to come up with an opinion about what they can get away with, they will come up with a decision you'd expect from a bunch of authoritarian pricks.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
They already had these laws for over a decade - it didn't stop the Boston Marathon bombers.
#DeleteChrome