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White House Asks FISA Court To Ignore 2nd Circuit's Decision On Bulk Surveillance
schwit1 sends news that the Obama Administration has made a legal request to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court to ignore a ruling from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals making bulk surveillance illegal. The government says it's doing so to create an "orderly transition" between now and the beginning of USA Freedom Act provisions in six months. Their legal argument is that the Circuit Court's rulings are only binding for lower courts — the FISA court is secretive and separated from the normal legal process, so it doesn't necessarily fit in the normal court hierarchy.
ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said, "While the FISA court isn’t formally bound by the second circuit’s ruling, it will certainly have to grapple with the second circuit’s interpretation of the ‘relevance’ requirement. The [court] will also have to consider whether Congress effectively adopted the second circuit’s interpretation of the relevance requirement when it passed the USA Freedom Act." The issue is further complicated because the Circuit Court did not actually issue an injunction against bulk surveillance, deferring instead to the congressional debate already underway about the Patriot Act and USA Freedom Act.
ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said, "While the FISA court isn’t formally bound by the second circuit’s ruling, it will certainly have to grapple with the second circuit’s interpretation of the ‘relevance’ requirement. The [court] will also have to consider whether Congress effectively adopted the second circuit’s interpretation of the relevance requirement when it passed the USA Freedom Act." The issue is further complicated because the Circuit Court did not actually issue an injunction against bulk surveillance, deferring instead to the congressional debate already underway about the Patriot Act and USA Freedom Act.
Genuinely curious here, what place do secret courts operated by secret police and underground judges have in a free, democratic society? Why are the Schutzstaffel enforcing secret laws in the "Land of the Free" and who gave them the right to trump everyone else's rights?
Your analogy is flawed.
The FISA Court does not convict anyone of crimes. Very little of what it does involves law enforcement. It it intended to ride herd on the Military's non-law enforcement data gathering so it can't do anything involving police.
That means there are no defendants. It's a military operation. It's designed to be extremely unfair to the targets because the ultimate goal is to kill the targets with as little loss of American life as physically possible.
Information can be turned over to the police, but then they have to do their own investigation (in many cases rediscovering the info that the NSA told them existed), and that entire investigation is fair game at trial.