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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."
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
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.
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.
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.
If they did that, maybe I'll have a change of heart and start supporting them.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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?
"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
Communist barbarism, Capitalism barbarism ... both the Soviets and America have demonstrated that eventually you get fucked by either system of government, and both systems will conspire to take away your rights if they find it expedient.
If you think glorious Capitalism is sparing you from any of this stuff, you are somewhat clueless.
Unjust societies come in all colors and stripes, and America is already an unjust society, moving towards even more state control over the individual.
Capitalism is a system of defining who owns what, but it doesn't make any guarantees about what you get to do with the rest of it. In its current form, corporate profits are more important than human rights.
Yeah, fuck the fascist USA with their terror squads, secret death camps for civilians, mass murders of citizens and what-not. Fucking come on.
The first step in curing a disease is acknowledging its symptoms.
Chanting U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A won't get you nearer to the solution.
withholding evidence from the defense because it's classified? That's akin to a show trial.
They're using their grammar skills there.
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...
Then why shouldn't the government have complete access to your data?
For the same reason that (some) people being exhibitionists shouldn't allow the government or some business to secretly install video cameras in my bathroom. And then when they are discovered have some idiot say (and be taken seriously) that everyone knows that you should sweep your bathroom for cameras and anyone who doesn't has no expectation of privacy.
As the technological means of snooping improve at a pace consistent with Moore's Law, and the "internet of things" increases the physical space that is internet connected, the expense and technological difficulty of maintaining any privacy will become prohibitive for any person who wishes to communicate at all.
Accepting the argument that nobody has any justifiable expectations of privacy under any conditions where a better informed person might not have an expectation of privacy is the sure path to nobody having any privacy anywhere.
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.