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EFF: US Gov't Bid To Alter Court Record in Jewel v. NSA
The EFF is only today able to release details of an attempt by the government to alter the historical record in the case brought by the EFF against the NSA in Jewel v. NSA. "On June 6, the court held a long hearing in Jewel in a crowded, open courtroom, widely covered by the press. We were even on the local TV news on two stations. At the end, the Judge ordered both sides to request a transcript since he ordered us to do additional briefing. But when it was over, the government secretly, and surprisingly sought permission to "remove" classified information from the transcript, and even indicated that it wanted to do so secretly, so the public could never even know that they had done so." As you'd expect of the EFF, they fought back with vigorous objections, and in the end the government did not get its way, instead deciding that it hadn't given away any classified information after all.
"The transcript of a court proceeding is the historical record of that event, what will exist and inform the public long after the persons involved are gone. The government's attempt to change this history was unprecedented. We could find no example of where a court had granted such a remedy or even where such a request had been made. This was another example of the government's attempt to shroud in secrecy both its own actions, as well as the challenges to those actions. We are pleased that the record of this attempt is now public. But should the situation recur, we will fight it as hard as we did this time."
We could find no example of where a court had granted such a remedy or even where such a request had been made.
Well, duh! Normally our rewriting of history is effective enough that you will not find such records.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. "Reality control," they called it: in Newspeak, "doublethink."
1984 - George Orwell
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
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Sure there is!
As with the other Ministries in the novel, the Ministry of Truth is a misnomer and in reality serves the opposite of its purported namesake: it is responsible for any necessary falsification of historical events. In another sense, and in keeping with the concept of doublethink, the ministry is aptly named, in that it creates/manufactures "truth" in the Newspeak sense of the word. The book describes a willful fooling of posterity using doctored historical archives to show a government-approved version of events.
Am I living in the real world, or a book?
Back when America was a great country no witnesses would have survived to testify.
The end game of NSA is a perfect one-way mirror: They have all information about your activities, and you have zero information about their activities.
Note that this is the opposite of what the American public needs to make an informed decision during elections.
I read... ...and it reads to me like.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
USG apparently says something in open court they shouldn't have said.
USG makes an overly broad request to remove all record of the event.
Judge shares that info.
Defense argues that, at best, it should be redacted.
Judge seems to agree, asks for details.
USG says, "Meh, I guess it's OK."
Everyone goes home happy.
Meh.
The NSA is not above the local law. Now ask yourself, who's running the country really, nut cases
like the Clap and the Xander and their cheerleaders, or you, the one carrying the vote and the pitchfork.
My favorite example of government overreach was:
"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."
-- Redacted from a US Supreme Court document by the Ashcroft
Justice Department in the name of national security.
Which party or parties are being referred to by this article when it says "The Court allowed the government a first look at the transcript..." and "...the government wrote a letter..." et cetera. Was it "The Government" or the director of the NSA? Was it "The Government" or The President of the United States of America? Was it "The Government" or someone from the DoD. Was it Congress? The Senate? We the people?