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Judge Orders DOJ To Turn Over FISA Surveillance Documents
itwbennett (1594911) writes "In a victory for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which is suing to make the DOJ release information about surveillance on U.S. citizens, a California judge on Friday ordered the Department of Justice to produce 66 pages of documents for her review. The judge said the agency failed to justify keeping the documents secret and she will decide whether the documents, including one opinion and four orders by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), were improperly withheld from the public."
....3....2...1....GONE!
That assumes that the information is classified because it's genuinely sensitive rather than classified because classifying it helps cover up wrongdoing.
The executive branch has thought itself above the constitution since 1789
Fixed it for you.
(If you want to cut Washington a break you could say 1801. Jefferson thought the Louisiana purchase unconstitutional but did it anyway, perhaps the first "the ends justify the means" rationalization used by an American President. Then of course we have 1861 and Abe's questionable activities during the American Civil War)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Fuck off and die, apologist. After all the corruption we've seen revealed in the US military-industrial-espionage complex, the only thing that really needs to be kept secret is nuclear launch codes. Everything else should be leaked, as it would pose no existential threat to the US, we are in no danger of invasion.
Even the death of a few agents in the field, the usual danger that scaremongers bring up, would be worth it if it struck a blow to the steady establishment of a police state.
All three branches of government along with the intelligence agencies have proven that they cannot be trusted to hide behind the shield of 'classified information'.
Our rights are rapidly vanishing and a police state is being erected. It has become a competition between each newly elected or appointed set of government to see how they can break more laws than the last guys. It's not a democrat or a republican thing, it's a wealthy-and-powerful thing. The wealthy and powerful are using government to find new ways to control you, spy on you, rob you and imprison you.
If ever there was a time to push for the 'classified information' curtain to be torn down, that time is now. Information is being kept secret not for national security reasons, but to make it harder to expose overreach and lawlessness by our own government.
Then she returns then and doesn't disclose their contents.
Of course she can use her new found knowlege to make decisions pertaining to the case that will seem arbitrary to the rest of us. But i think the chances of that here are slim.
Let's also keep the nuclear assembly instructions secret... but yeah, classifying stuff should be opt-in (and hard to do), not opt-out.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
The only upvote that really matters is the one at the ballot box. Even though Lessig is right--by the time the candidate is on the ballot the candidate is already corrupted--it would still be a marvelous statement if droves of citizens started voting third party.
Also, pardon my somewhat US-centric answer.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Actually I'd chock one up to Andrew Jackson, who marched tens of thousands of indigenous people from their tribal areas in the southern US to what's now Oklahoma, directly against court-order, in what's now known as the Trail of Tears.
Fact of the matter is, unless two branches gang-up on the third, it's not really, truly going to be illegal. Right now there aren't enough people in the legislative branch and the judicial branch to truly oppose the executive branch, especially in the post-2001 era when the executive branch was given latitude by both others.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
We may have won the battle, but the war is still yet to be won.
I believe that you are grossly and intentionally ignoring how and why documents have been classified historically by the US Government and its agencies. This is not something new, unfortunately the abuse goes back at least to the 1960s. COINTELPRO and Operation Mockingbird are just two examples where systems were abused for political gain and oppression. Those two are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, but the easiest to find information about.
That said, this judge could agree with the Government that there is a secret to be kept. Your insinuation that a judge is not intelligent enough to make the distinction is both disturbing and disgusting. The judge may release portions of the documents they feel safe, or the whole, or none.
The false claim being made by government agencies and FISA courts is that they can't reveal _anything_ for security reasons. Even when discussing terrorist activity this can be easily displayed with redacted information. You are either falling for the gag, or trying to proliferate it. Either way, shame on you.
More and more people are waking up to the level of corruption we currently have in the USA. Quite frankly, not everyone in politics is on the side of the "insiders" trying to pull all the strings. Pressure is mounting for change and to clean up the corruption, citizens must keep this up until it's actually resolved.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Last I checked, poor people don't have monopolies on TV and Radio shows so so they can attempt to shape society. They don't influence tax code to give themselves more money and screw over those rich guys. They are not paying lobbyists to get favorable laws passed. They are not spending billions of dollars in foreign countries to start civil wars, and they are not out generating propaganda so that they can send the rich kids off to die in a war for profit.
Sure, there are people in every society that will take advantage of others for gain. We are supposed to have laws protecting us universally from that happening, yet today if you are rich you can take billions and walk but if you are poor and sell a joint you are doing 1-5 years.
So yeah, the ideologies are always going to be around. Those ideologies have been around since our earliest political writings (read Plato's "The Republic"). This is why we (you included) should be fighting to clean up the corruption, end the monopolization of media, and break up the financial cartels.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Stalemate continued, EFF showed some promise, but the DoJ has to 1) actually comply with the order, 2) The judge actually agree on merits, 3) The DoJ not immediately file for an appeal due to matters of national saftey, 4) the DoJ actually give the information to the EFF.
Don't get me wrong, what happened today was good, however calling it a victory is a bit premature.
Why will the papers be unavailable? My 10 bucks are on "technical error and for some mysterious reasons they're nowhere to be found on backups".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is a limit to this. For reference, see Iran 1979.
The Iran in 1979 was a police state if there ever was one. Ubiquitous secret police, extreme suppression of dissenters, the fourth largest military on the planet (all thanks to us, btw).
And then the students hit the roads by the millions. Interviews with them later revealed that they well expected to die that day. And they were not the religious jihadist kind, that came later, they were simply fed up with the regime to the point where their stance towards the Shah was "you or me. At the end of this day, one of us is gone. Either is fine by me, but that's how it will be".
The military pretty much noticed that. What do you want to do? What are you going to do after the 30 bullets in your rifle are shot? Sure, your kill/death ratio will be 30:1.
The problem is: the 1 is you. And no respawn.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As people are slowly understanding its a vast pool of people working on "classified" stuff. Much of it is now "classified" to just stop the press, courts, law reformers, other politically active groups from finding embracing details. From over priced failed projects, crimes and the use of contractors, hidden sites, staff- doctors, lawyers who worked at remote sites. The rapid advancement and political protection of people who faced no real background investigations to the use of dual citizens... to a vast illegal telco surveillance network and the tame brands that helped..
"A hidden world, growing beyond control (July 19, 2010) "
http://projects.washingtonpost...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Every time I read one of these posts I think to myself "Wow. This guy is so out of touch with reality....", finally glancing over the poster's username and letting out a sigh of relief, "oh, it's just cold fjord".
The most successful ideology so far is that you shouldn't take money from the rich, because if everyone works hard, he will be rich once, and then his own money is taken, right? This mantra has allowed the wealthy 1% to have an electorate that mostly votes for the one-percent-interest, because everyone hopes to be in the 1% sometimes, and thus doesn't want to vote against his prospective future interests. Somehow lost in this is the fact that you will only belong to the 1%, if you get more than 99% of all others, which by definition is not possible for 99% of the population.
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
John Steinbeck.
... a court should and will assume that the information you didn't hand over would be speaking against you. That is common practice. So if the judge orders the DOJ to hand over documents, it doesn't really matter that much (in the court case) whether they do or don't. If a plaintiff says "they should hand over these documents because it will clearly show that X is true", and they don't hand them over, then the court will assume that X is indeed true.
Oh, we believe it would be sensitive and damaging -- but we also believe it would be because they've breaking the law in many cases and bypassing any real oversight.
The assumption is the FISA court rubber stamps everything without actual regard for the law.
We don't trust them. We can't verify what they do. So we pretty much have to assume the worst.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Confidential information is information kept away from the people. In a democracy, the people are supposed to be in control of the government (you know, "government of the people", and all that).
So, when you keep information away from those who are in control, how can they make decisions based on that information?
I.e. should we have voted for those who wanted a war in Iraq? Without the real, classified, information on those weapons of mass destruction, none of us were capable of coming to a valid conclusion on that question. In other words, we were voting in blind - we had no idea what we were actually voting on. If Saddam had nukes, we might have been voting on saving the world. But in reality, we were voting on transferring Iraq from Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda.
If you vote without the necessary information, you may as well toss a coin. And nobody would suggest that a coin is democratic.
Third-party voting fails only if you consider victory the only consideration. But it need not be so cut and dried.
Voting for a third-party is more than getting somebody else into office; it sends a message to the incumbent two parties. More than anything else, it says to them that their constituents are dissatisfied with their policies and are looking for alternatives. It is a warning that their position is directly in threat and that it is necessary for them to become more reactive to the the desires of the voters.
In any election, it is unlikely that a third-party candidate will win - but not impossible. Democrats and Republicans are well aware of this. If enough people start voting for third-parties, they will change their policies to better reflect the attitudes and wants of their constituents. A rise of a third-party terrifies them and they will change to prevent it.
Your third-party candidate may not win, but if his policies are taken up by the primary parties anyway, it is still an effective win for the electorate.
So if your conscience dictates it, vote third-party. It is one of the major ways we as voters can indicate our dissatisfaction with the current regime - and one of the few ways to which they actually listen - and is most definitely /not/ a wasted vote.
You are suggesting that having any confidential information in a democracy is anti-democratic. That is clearly nonsense.
No, that's not it at all. Look, *nobody* is saying that the nuclear launch codes shouldn't be top secret information and not given out to the public, and *nobody* is saying that our nuclear bomb research (in depth) shouldn't be secret... but it's not a secret that there *are* launch codes and bomb secrets. Nobody is saying that we shouldn't have secret research for new military hardware, Lockheed Skunkworks type stuff, etc - we know it exists and much of it is "black budget" stuff, but there's a reason it's secret.
Nobody (I don't think) is saying the government shouldn't be able to *get a warrant* (with reasonable suspicions) to wiretap someone, track their cell location, and any number of other things. Even if the warrant is issued by a secret court on a person-by-person basis, there may well be reasons the warrant shouldn't be "public record". That being said, *everyone* should be against warrantless tracking/wiretapping of citizens of your country, not of select people but of *everyone* in bulk. If they can't come up with a reason for someone, much less *everyone*, to be a "suspect" and get a properly issued warrant from a judge for that person (or people) *by name*, then they shouldn't be doing it because it is illegal. They don't want the documents of even just what they are doing (in general, without any specific names/people) released - nobody is asking them where the 'taps' are for the internet cables, what the exact technology is they are using, etc... but when they can go in front of Congress and flat out *lie* about gathering information on everyone, there's an obvious problem.
That post he just made is quite useful to to the crowd of people that may not be familiar with you and your particular flavor of bias.
He knows you. And 5 slashot moderators know you and are willing to spend points to bump this up.
His post was, in short, insightful.
But hey, some people need more help than others,
Feel free to point out the facts I get wrong
CAN DO!
Your overall argument is that the rich aren't all that powerful and the poor have plenty of power. That the poor can get together and give their money to political organizations that run this town.
And that'd be nice, if it were true. But the fact of the matter is that the rich ARE powerful, very powerful, to the point that
Fact: The gini coefficient in the USA is rising. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is shrinking.
Political ideologues aren't simply "always going to be around." Some of them are dangerous and need to be guarded against.
Not when they're homeless poor people. The crazy guy ranting on the corner WILL always be there and no, there's no real need to go guard against him. If anything we need to guard against the people trying to censor him.
The guy is harmless, at least on a political scale. He has zero hope of swaying the masses. If he somehow managed to gather a crowd and/or become a cult leader, and people started to listen to him, he'd probably no longer be a poor homeless person. He'd transform into a radio host, a televangelist, a full-blown-locked-in-a-compound cult leader, or worse, a CEO.
When did "the rich" develop a monopoly on TV and radio stations?
Since their inceptions? Only the rich could afford to step into those industries. They were serious money ordeals back in the day. But hey, now anyone with a phone can shoot video. Look at all of those mom&pop TV channels watched by millions! Oh, wait, no, that's Youtube and the Internet.
Well radio broadcasters are cheap! Look at all the... oh wait, the barrier to entry for commercial radio stations is really high just to keep competition out. Well there's always HAM... which is specifically barred from making money from it.
So this one is wrong. You're presuming there was a time that the rich didn't have a monopoly on it. And that isn't true.
Are you confusing "the rich" with corporations?
And this might be the basis of why your worldview is so fucked.
YES. The rich and powerful run the corporations. Literally. The job is titled "CEO". Their boss is supposed to be the shareholders, but it's effectively the board, which is composed of a handful of rich people who are CEOs of their own corporations which have the original CEO on THEIR board.
Is there some group or segment of the population that you think doesn't have at least some radio stations catering to it?
And this here is some fantastic spin. Here let me point it out for you.
"catering to".
There is some rich individual, running a corporation that controls a chunk of spectrum that caters to rednecks. They pay lip-service to the cultural background of the redneck, play the right music, and run ads that hit the mark, but it is wholly controlled, steered, and profited by soulless corporate goons that don't know the difference between a banjo and a guitar. If you think that a corporation that SELLS to a group is the same thing as the group being politically empowered, then you are monstrously fucked up.
Who are the rich people that you are apparently claiming are "spending billions of dollars in foreign countries to start civil wars"?
Bush. Rumsfeld. Cheney. They spent billions of (someone else's) dollars to destabilize the middle east. The sectarian violence in Iraq during the US occupation killed 100's of thousands.
Arguably