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NSA's Role In Terror Cases Concealed From Defense Lawyers
Rick Zeman writes "'Confidentiality is critical to national security.' So wrote the Justice Department in concealing the NSA's role in two wiretap cases. However, now that the NSA is under the gun, it's apparently not so critical, according to New York attorney Joshua Dratel: 'National security is about keeping illegal conduct concealed from the American public until you're forced to justify it because someone ratted you out.' The first he heard of the NSA's role in his client's case was 'when [FBI deputy director Sean] Joyce disclosed it on CSPAN to argue for the effectiveness of the NSA's spying.' Dratel challenged the legality of the spying in 2011, and asked a federal judge to order the government to produce the wiretap application the FBI gave the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to justify the surveillance. 'Disclosure of the FISA applications to defense counsel – who possess the requisite security clearance – is also necessary to an accurate determination of the legality of the FISA surveillance, as otherwise the defense will be completely in the dark with respect to the basis for the FISA surveillance,' wrote Dratel. According to Wired, 'The government fought the request in a 60-page reply brief (PDF), much of it redacted as classified in the public docket. The Justice Department argued that the defendants had no right to see any of the filings from the secret court, and instead the judge could review the filings alone in chambers."
So have NSA denied their involvement in taking facebook down today?
why showing your hole cards before the hands are actually played?
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And by the way who the FUCK is overseeing the chain of evidence?
The right to face your accuser. In a regular court, all evidence being used against a person has to be in both the prosecutors and defenses possession. I watch enough Law and Order to know this :) (Also, my neighbours are lawyers)
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Then why shouldn't the government have complete access to your data? Honestly, we use Google, Facebook, ect... they all have detailed records of our activities and identities that they aggregate and sell for profit. Yet no one protests, as they enjoy the bread and circuses of free Facebook or YouTube. If people started to take their privacy seriously, to attribute a value to their individuality, then maybe we'd get somewhere. The internet is a cesspool, assume everyone is watching. If you don't want your secrets known, protect yourself. We are still in the stoneages of Internet development, imagine what it will be like in 20 years! Wake up people! Take responsibility! If the NSA doesn't get you, Chinese/Iranian/Russian/ect... hackers will.
NSA is now shown to be an anti-american organisation, anti-constitutional, illegal in its very nature.
It should be shut down, spending on NSA should be brought down to 0 and people working in it should be looked at individually, because each one of them is violating the law and the management should be imprisoned (but at least impeached) for lying to Congress.
NSA has a role in terror cases alright, it's creating terror. It's terrorizing Americans (and others as well by the way, not that it matters to Americans much).
roman_mir
I felt I needed a dose of stupidity, so I tuned into one of the news channels to see what they were saying about this case. After they were done with their character assassination of Edward Snowden (as if it has anything to do with the NSA's spying), they decided to apply some brilliant logic to the situation: Since Snowden is so clearly a dirty traitor and can't be trusted, we should all trust the guys from the NSA to do what's right. Evidently, if one person cannot be trusted, you must trust the secretive guy who is in direct opposition to the other guy...
And this comes from the people who claim to want small government. Yeah, okay. Small government... unless we think something will help stop the terrorists, and in that case, the government should do whatever it wants and violate the constitution as it wants!
So you lose the right to know your accuser, the basis on which you're accused, and the ability to see the evidence against you.
But you have to trust us, if he wasn't a bad person we wouldn't be watching him. We're just not allowed to tell you why.
This is getting pretty scary, and it seems like it undermines some pretty basic rights of the accused. Because apparently you could be tried and convicted without ever being told what for.
The US (and sadly by extension most every other country) is ceasing to be free, and starting to get to the level of the of Soviets in terms of being able to do anything in terms of state security.
Sad. This freedom thing has been a nice experiment, but not we're moving towards the global police state -- or at least a globe filled with a bunch of different police states.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Congress should be impeaching the President, and then in an act of real patriotism impeach themselves.
99% of Congress went along with Bush's illegal anticonstitutional plan, and then went along a second time to Obama's tune.
Fucking traitors that they are.
Confidentiality is critical to national security.
Call tracking is critical to national security.
Email tracking is critical to national security.
Location tracking is critical to national security.
Financial tracking is critical to national security.
Social network tracking is critical to national security.
tracking is critical to national security.
I bet some dictators are feeling silly of not thinking of this before...lets call it democracy and then rollback the changes saying "critical for national security"
Why? Because they let it happen.
You don't give a toss about your own constitution, if you did, you would have done something by now.
How many Bee Gees are StayinAliiiiiiiiiiiiii eye iiiiiiiiiiiiiii eye iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiivah ??
An individual cannot "wage war." An organization that can only field a few attackers here and there cannot "wage war." Waging war implicitly means the ability to attack an enemy, occupy their land and drive out their political authority. Most terrorist organizations cannot field an army capable of occupying a one camel town for more than week, and their affiliates that can are not making war on us.
If the President can use his war powers on them, then he sure as heck can use them on MS13 or any other large scale criminal gang in the US as most of them have more power to inflict severe loss of life and property than 90% of the Islamic terrorist groups.
1. Has evidence from PRISM been used to indict citizens of the US or its NATO allies. 2. Have any of those accused been denied trial and classed as "enemy combatants"? 3. Do any of the above now reside in Guantanamo Bay ? If all the above is true then PRISM has already been used in the worst way imaginable. I think you'll find that there are 2 Canadian citizens were held in Guantanemo, with a further 16 candidates for immigration or refugees. That's just Canada, I am sure there are more from other NATO partners. I'd be curious to know who was caught with PRISM or ECHELON?
It's yet another civil right plopping down into the toilet.
Isn't that a bedrock principle of our justice system? What would you do if you were on a jury where the prosecutor was allowed to talk about evidence and not even the defendant's attorney was allowed to to see the order that showed it was legally obtained?
Should the jury at that point disregard the evidence because they can presume it was illegally obtained?
Who watches the watchers?
As all of us that are in IT that report to people who are "computer illiterate", we all know how we can spin the truth or flat out lie, and since we are the "experts" the people that we report to are in the dark. Sound familiar?
No technological ability to listen in on phone calls? So the NSA is so much out of date, that they lack the technology from the 1890's?
Granted, it has been a very long time, but the last time I read the 4th amendment, it did not say, "you have the right to privacy against illegal search and SEIZURE unless the person or agency has congressional oversight."
Perhaps our congressmen need to hire their own IT contractors to validate any and all claims before they make a decision.
"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
- Hermann Goering
Here is an in-depth NPR broadcast from 2006 that explains the history, and abuse of the executive branch claiming State Secrets
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5495919
withholding evidence from the defense because it's classified? That's akin to a show trial.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Sums up the Federal Government.
Obama knows that a Civil War will not erupt at his White House door.
But NSA, DNI and NSC with the White House (including DoJ) are working their way into a legal Catch-22. We'll see if someone spots it in a few days.
If prosecutor is allowed to present secret evidence to the judge, the defence lawyers should also have the right to present their own secret evidence that the prosecutor will not be able to see/hear. I wonder how fair they would find it...
I don't feel particularly terrorized, honestly.
And no, I don't want our premier signals intelligence group shut down for this.
Just pass some laws to ensure that this stuff only gets used in courts for actual terrorism or defense. I don't want to see even armed bank robbers thrown in jail due to NSA intel. Not unless they declassify it. That actually makes sense.
I don't feel particularly terrorized, honestly.
And no, I don't want our premier signals intelligence group shut down for this.
Just pass some laws to ensure that this stuff only gets used in courts for actual terrorism or defense. I don't want to see even armed bank robbers thrown in jail due to NSA intel. Not unless they declassify it. That actually makes sense.
News flash for you.... those laws already exist, and are being willfully skirted as we type. What makes you think they will follow the "new" laws you propose?
I always find it funny how legal briefs are typically anything but.
That whole discussion is a Wrong Dichotomy: If NSA finds out something, they are supposed to "anonymously tipp off" the FBI about the criminal/terrorist and let them do the rest. If the government wants to use an NSA intercept as "evidence", then they need to make it open how NSA got it.
I am smelling a boatload of bullshit here. The Military Industrial Complex and their "ISR" subbranch want absolute police powers instead of just tipping off law enforcement and let them collect evidence the usual way (bugging some person very specifically instead of fishing expeditions).
terror means intense fear.
If we are not talking about cases of extreme fear, please use other words.
It is not the lack of morality in the powerful that should concern us, but rather the fact that lack of morality so often leads to power.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
the judge classifies you !
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
This is the absolute worst, heart-breaking part of this slow imposition of the police state. Sure, you expect the spooks (spies) to want ever more data and unchecked power, and sure, you sadly expect elected officials to either be fascists (R) or cowards (D), but goddamnit Judges! Federal Judges are supposed to be the bulwark against blatant abuses of the Peoples constitutional rights, especially by the government!
For them to have just rolled over and rubber-stamped every FISA fishing expedition and allowing the DOJ to conduct Kafkaesque Star Chamber inquisitions is sickening and unforgiveable. Either they are as cowardous as the Ds, or they themselves have been blackmailed by data from PRISM, et al.
The NSA pleads the 5th for violating the 4th.
If the govt. says you have nothing to worry about with the data collections without warrants if you are not a law breaker, then the same needs to be applied to those collecting the data. If the govt. has nothing to hide, then it should make the collection of the data available, what are they trying to hide.
The US *has* turned into a democratic despotic state.
They are simply lying.