[HN Gopher] New Super Secret Surveillance Court Covering Old Sup...
___________________________________________________________________
New Super Secret Surveillance Court Covering Old Super Secret
Surveillance Court
Author : rntn
Score : 78 points
Date : 2024-02-02 19:32 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techdirt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techdirt.com)
| instagib wrote:
| There's always another secrecy group that oversees the other and
| then eventually is overseen by the joint chiefs, president, or
| some other un-named official.
| strangattractor wrote:
| This is why we need a Super Secret Journalism Organization to
| monitor and report on the other Super Secret groups.
| electric_mayhem wrote:
| Ed and Chelsea and Juilan probably have some thoughts on how
| that works out.
| ciabattabread wrote:
| This sounds like an executive tribunal. What is the appeals
| process, and which real federal court does it end up in?
| zerocrates wrote:
| I imagine that since this is an executive-branch "court," the
| theoretical recourse would be something like the Administrative
| Procedure Act's general provision for challenging "agency
| action." Or otherwise, directly filing suit as before.
|
| Regardless of the theoretical vehicle, you'd have the same
| problems in the way of success as prior attempts in the courts
| have had, where you can't get the information needed to have
| your claim survive in the first place.
| joedevon wrote:
| You have been on double secret probation
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Can we just use the source article instead of this tech..dirt:
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/17/inside-bidens-secre...
| GoodUser77 wrote:
| As usually
| vjulian wrote:
| It irritates to no end when US presidents are not only falsely
| attributed to government actions but falsely portrayed, even
| thinly, as masterminding those related plans. Over the course of
| news cycles it paints the picture of a superman not unlike the
| absurd hyperbole in descriptions of North Korea's Dear Leader. In
| the US, I am not sure whether it can be attributed to laziness or
| to the calculus of the news establishment, but regardless it is
| poor journalism.
| oooyay wrote:
| It's an election year. Party constituents eat polarizing
| rhetoric and outlandish takes like it's a breakfast bar.
| Journalists are happy to stock that bar.
|
| fwiw, it wasn't Biden that created the court it was Merrick
| Garland: https://www.justice.gov/opcl/redress-data-protection-
| review-...
|
| Also, not exactly a secret given that it had a PR release and
| the judges are known. Maybe the secret part is getting in front
| of them.
| smcin wrote:
| The court's functioning is absolutely still a secret to its
| plaintiffs [EU residents]; its location is a secret, the DOJ
| refuses to say if it has taken a case yet, or when it will.
| [That implies it has not published any rulings, or maybe it
| will never publish rulings]. Its decisions will also be kept
| a secret, from both the EU residents petitioning the court
| and the federal agencies tasked with following the law.
| Plaintiffs [EU-residents] are not allowed to appear in person
| [not even remotely by Zoom, it sounds like?] and are
| represented by a special advocate, appointed by the U.S.
| Attorney General.
|
| I can't see US citizens being told to just trust a secret
| European court whose deliberations aren't known, yet affects
| their lives, visas, travels, finances etc.
|
| "Maybe the secret part is getting in front of them." No, they
| already stated that the EU plaintiffs don't have the right to
| appear before the court. So they don't get in front of them.
|
| On the "Animal House" taxonomy of double-secret, it's up
| there.
| oooyay wrote:
| I think your points are fair and I largely agree with you,
| but I'd probably use the word "opaque" rather than
| secretive. Sometimes opaque systems _do_ serve a purpose,
| other times they 're an excuse to undermine rights and
| liberties. This court deals entirely in classified
| information (from its mandate) and only produces classified
| rulings. I linked both of the sources (.gov websites) in
| another comment. Whether or not that's good enough to
| remain opaque I don't know. I do know that I'm not a fan of
| any surveillance state and I'm not confident in the ability
| of intergovernment watchdogs to spot violations, even gross
| ones.
| leereeves wrote:
| > fwiw, it wasn't Biden that created the court it was Merrick
| Garland
|
| But Merrick Garland is a Biden appointee. Don't you think
| leaders should be held accountable for the actions of their
| administration?
|
| Of course, as vjulian points out, they aren't masterminding
| everything that their subordinates do, but they do choose who
| to appoint and have the power to reverse anything they
| disapprove of once they learn about it.
| oooyay wrote:
| > Don't you think leaders should be held accountable for
| the actions of their administration?
|
| Color me cynical, but people only mutter this when it's
| someone on the other team. So, in general do I think we
| should follow that principle? Yes. Do I think people widely
| believe that enough to hold their own self-interest-
| adjacent parties accountable? Certainly not.
|
| If you want to be _very_ picky, the rule Mr Garland
| invented was in response to a Biden executive order [1]
| [2]. The executive order is long, but section 3 is pretty
| succinct and clear. If Mr Garland implemented an opaque
| system then I can predict one of two scenarios occurred,
| maybe both:
|
| 1. All of the information the court receives is classified
| and should never have been leaked in the first place, so no
| one should know. That means the way someone _does_ know is
| because of the watchdogs inside the intelligence community.
|
| 2. Mr Garland is openly defying the President through
| process and appeasing someone (maybe the intelligence
| community).
|
| 1: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/10/14/202
| 2-22...
|
| 2: https://www.state.gov/executive-order-14086-policy-and-
| proce...
| smcin wrote:
| Your comment is related to the Politico articled cited, not the
| actual techdirt article, right? (the techdirt article has 0
| named mentions of Biden or Obama, and only one of 'former Trump
| campaign adviser Carter Page').
|
| Yeah, Politico's use of "Biden's court... Biden's proposal" is
| annoyingly lazy DC shorthand for "the Biden-era
| DOJ/DHS/FTC/etc."
| vjulian wrote:
| Correct. I saw that someone had linked the original article
| and therefore skipped directly there.
| claytongulick wrote:
| Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? [1]
|
| Who watches the watchmen?
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...
| flipbrad wrote:
| The fact that Eric Holder is a judge on this new court - while
| also working at Covington & Burling [1], a law firm actively
| involved in helping large companies defend these very same
| transatlantic data flows [2] - tells you all you need to know
| about the new court. Ditto his fellow judge, Rajesh De, who used
| to be the NSA's top judge.
|
| [1] https://www.cov.com/en/professionals/h/eric-holder
|
| [2] https://www.cov.com/en/news-and-
| insights/news/2019/07/coving...
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Can we just get to the point and admit the world, all countries
| are corrupt and that evil is the entity that's in control?
|
| You can no longer trust anything or anyone. If you speak out your
| shot, reprimanded or gagged.
|
| Regardless to who owns who's data it will always be misused,
| abused or used for something.
|
| And as data is now a commodity that can be sold to anyone and the
| sci-fi dystopian future is already one. There is no freedom nor
| freedom to speech, with the ability that we can reach space on a
| commercial level with satellites, fear for the worse.
|
| The internet is a failure. It brings usefulness but sure isn't
| used for it; not anymore at least.
|
| Prove me wrong, but with the masses lapping up social media,
| you'll going to have a hard time proving it. My two cents.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I think it should be a basic human right that any citizen of a
| country should be permitted to have a complete list of courts,
| their locations, their judges, and their claims to authority.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| What's been happening with these FISA courts is disgusting. They
| really have no shame.
|
| The only reason we know about their spying against the Trump
| campaign is because people hate Trump and they thought nobody
| would care.
|
| We know about Trump but who else are they spying on that we
| haven't learned about yet?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-02 23:00 UTC)