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| DoJ Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance |
| 2013-06-09 |
| [Mother Earth News] A riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, viewed through a PRISM. In the midst of revelations that the government has conducted extensive top-secret surveillance operations to collect domestic phone records and internet communications, the Justice Department was due to file a court motion Friday in its effort to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the government had violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying. You must trust us, we are only interested in...megadata. This important case--all the more relevant in the wake of this week's disclosures--was triggered after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate intelligence committee, started crying foul in 2011 about US government snooping. As a member of the intelligence committee, he had learned about domestic surveillance activity affecting American citizens that he believed was improper. He and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), another intelligence committee member, raised only vague warnings about this data collection, because they could not reveal the details of the classified program that concerned them. But in July 2012, Wyden was able to get the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify two statements that he wanted to issue publicly. They were: * On at least one occasion the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held that some collection carried out pursuant to the Section 702 minimization procedures used by the government was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. * I believe that the government's implementation of Section 702 of FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] has sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law, and on at least one occasion the FISA Court has reached this same conclusion. For those who follow the secret and often complex world of high-tech government spying, this was an aha moment. The FISA court Wyden referred to oversees the surveillance programs run by the government, authorizing requests for various surveillance activities related to national security, and it does this behind a thick cloak of secrecy. Wyden's statements led to an obvious conclusion: He had seen a secret FISA court opinion that ruled that one surveillance program was unconstitutional and violated the spirit of the law. But, yet again, Wyden could not publicly identify this program. Yet another memory lapse. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #8 What is ikely is that the Obama Admin asked the FISA court for permission to do something and then did a bit more than they were permitted. Like "no fly zone" over Libya, lord garth. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2013-06-09 16:12 |
| #7 Mother Earth News? :) The times they are a changing.... all most heaven, South New Jersey, reminds of the brownfields far away.. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2013-06-09 15:35 |
| #6 ..that would be Star Chamber. The Star Chamber (Latin: Camera stellata) was an English court of law that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster until 1641. It was made up of Privy Councillors, as well as common-law judges and supplemented the activities of the common-law and equity courts in both civil and criminal matters. The court was set up to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against prominent people, those so powerful that ordinary courts could never convict them of their crimes. Court sessions were held in secret, with no indictments, and no witnesses. Evidence was presented in writing. Over time it evolved into a political weapon, a symbol of the misuse and abuse of power by the English monarchy and courts. In modern usage, legal or administrative bodies with strict, arbitrary rulings and secretive proceedings are sometimes called, metaphorically or poetically, star chambers. This is a pejorative term and intended to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the proceedings. The inherent lack of objectivity of politically motivated charges has led to substantial reforms in English law in most jurisdictions since that time. Back to where we started from. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2013-06-09 11:36 |
| #5 I worry more about the FISA court. Decisions they make are essentially done in secret and doesn't seem to have much oversight. Who do they answer to? Congressional security oversight committees? |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2013-06-09 10:52 |
| #4 Some of the decisions SCOTUS has come up with are absolutely mind-boggling and defy logic. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2013-06-09 10:49 |
| #3 The long line of legal precedent is the requirement to have a warrant to search first class mail and to tap a person's phone line which is anchored on the 4th. Some one is playing games in the concept that if you search everyone, say a DUI check point, you can do this, ignoring that it occurs on an open public road for which there is no expectation of privacy. By this appearent rationale, if the state breaks down everyone's doors and searches everyone's houses, then they say its OK. As for the court, the 14th says we can not discriminate based upon race, and yet the court has operated with intent to in fact discriminate on race for over two generations. Just because some one in robes says what it says, doesn't mean that is what it truly means, particularly if even uncredentialed can grasp the basic intent and concepts. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2013-06-09 08:37 |
| #2 I doubt Champ has the synaptic energy or the intelligence collection background to coordinate, process, and fuse all of these scandalous surveillance events. Someone or a group of someone's in some type of [possibly off-site] White House fusion cell has been quite busy sending out taskings, managing and harvesting collection, and formulating targeting strategies and policy responses. None of these sordid events happen by chance or accident, there is a formal mechanism and programme at work. I hope that this structure will soon be revealed. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2013-06-09 03:49 |
| #1 MotherJ misunderstands the situation. For there to be a 4th amendment (unreasonable search) issue is a high barrier. It would require a court to find, for example, that a person had a reasonable expectation that the phone numbers they called would be secret. That's just not going to happen. What is ikely is that the Obama Admin asked the FISA court for permission to do something and then did a bit more than they were permitted. Even though it shows the Admin as sneaky, deceitful, mendacious, etc., that's not a constitutional issue. Its an administrative issue. |
| Posted by: lord garth 2013-06-09 00:21 |