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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSecret Supreme Court Within the Supreme Court Responsible for Growing Body of Law
In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A.
from ERIC LICHTBLAU at NYT:
WASHINGTON In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nations surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.
The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the courts classified decisions.
The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.
Last month, a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward J. Snowden, leaked a classified order from the FISA court, which authorized the collection of all phone-tracing data from Verizon business customers. But the courts still-secret decisions go far beyond any single surveillance order, the officials said.
Weve seen a growing body of law from the court, a former intelligence official said. What you have is a common law that develops where the court is issuing orders involving particular types of surveillance, particular types of targets . . .
read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/in-secret-court-vastly-broadens-powers-of-nsa.html?_r=0
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
jaysunb
(11,856 posts)1-Old-Man
(2,667 posts)Secret law is no law at all.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)bigtree
(86,005 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Kidding aside, this is an important topic that we need to be concerned about, thank you for posting and recced.
bigtree
(86,005 posts). . . but this issue of the NSA's brilliant hacker children and the willful and aggressive disregard for our rights to privacy would seem to me to be a no-brainer issue for Democrats. Clearly, the president has waded into the residue from the last administration, and, instead of draining the swamp, he's content to just stand there wiggling his toes in it while the muck fills up around him.
It's going to take leadership on the presidential level to reign in an agency like the NSA, and, it shouldn't be forgotten that NSA is just one of well over a dozen 'visible' spy agencies which are currently operating. There are entirely too many former Bushites left in government for Pres. Obama to assume he's put some lid on the privacy abuses just by engaging the FISA court. The tinkering and tweaking he's done will ensure that he'll go down in history as a cohort and accomplice of the homeland security ruse, rather than someone who was determined and responsible for actual reform and repeal of the Bush-era intelligence abuses and anti-constitutional snooping on Americans.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)imagine that he got a friendly visit from those that were running our intelligence agencies. They probably explained that they had this elaborate system running to keep America safe and that if he were to mess with it too much, like appointing people that werent familiar with it, there could be consequences that might result in a terrorist disaster. And he would get the blame for messing with the security system.
I am not making excuses but trying to point out how difficult it might be. I still believe he is responsible and should have done more.
bigtree
(86,005 posts). . . but it isn't particularly flattering to point out how much he's trusted, believed, and entrusted to the Bush-era defenders of the former administration's anti-constitutional power-grabs.
I'd, personally, attribute his acquiescence on most of it to his relative inexperience in these matters of intelligence and 'national security.' I'd have to really devalue his intelligence to make that argument, but, I had hoped that he would have found folks willing to stand up to the system to help him if he was really convinced the Bush NS infrastructure needed to be dismantled. The fact that he hasn't says something.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)or he doesnt have the power to change them.
temmer
(358 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)a kind of slow motion putsch.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)and wonder why it is that Americans think the demons of "our" human nature aren't like the demons of "theirs".
Zorra
(27,670 posts)ucrdem
(15,512 posts)Especially the way legal decisions and statutes are formatted. The NYT is not above a good Obama bash now and again, especially when there's a nice war in the offing. Just sayin'.
JoeyT
(6,785 posts)And presumably in every single thread made about this issue: The rulings are 100 pages, not 100 pages of rulings total.