New Bill Would Declassify FISC Opinions 130
Trailrunner7 writes "A group of eight senators from both parties have introduced a new bill that would require the attorney general to declassify as many of the rulings of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as possible as a way of bringing into the sunlight much of the law and opinion that guides the government's surveillance efforts. Under the terms of the proposed law, the Justice Department would be required to declassify major FISC opinions as a way to give Americans a view into how the federal government is using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Patriot Act. If the attorney general determines that a specific ruling can't be declassified without endangering national security, he can declassify a summary of it. If even that isn't possible, then the AG would need to explain specifically why the opinion needs to be kept secret."
Re:Explain... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can see it now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Your position is no better than "We can't tell you anything", just on the opposite extreme.
Actually, assuming that the government is doing wrong is much better.
With that said, I only meant that they use that excuse to cover up their wrongdoings, not that there's never a legitimate threat. Problem is, the ones who decide it's a matter of national security seem to love abusing that little power they have.
a good start but... (Score:4, Insightful)
This more holistic approach is necessary because the usual suspects (CIA, NSA) and the usual frameworks (FISC) only capture a tiny fraction of what the intelligence community actually engages in. Take the NRO ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office [wikipedia.org] ) for example. It has a comparable budget to the more well known agencies and they were even caught by the CIA to be squirrelling away extra money, presumably to finance black projects. They started in spy satellites but these days they appear to devote a significant portion of the resources towards hacking. They really put the NSA to shame when it comes to blackhat and grayhat activities, though good luck finding anyone to confirm that for you. Let's just say they appear to enjoy inspiring awe and fear in their employees, to the point where though I've met several people who worked for them I had to do a considerable amount of detective work and deduction to figure it out. And even then there was no explicit confirmation I was right, just a wry smile and a "I can neither confirm nor deny..."
And that's just an agency we know about. Like the NSA before it, the NRO used to be secret. And there remain still more secret intelligence agencies today, probably even more fearsome and powerful than the public ones. And if you think these guys go through FISC every time they feel the urge to skim through someone's inbox...
So, back to my original point: what we really need here is a mechanism to permit the discovery and prosecution of people who conceal crimes, both for the original crime and for the act of covering it up by claiming state secrets. Crimes like lying to congress under oath. Or spying on American citizens, without judicial oversight, in ways that would be illegal if a private citizen did it (which does not necessarily apply to PRISM but most certainly applies to other programs.)
And they *are* opinions ... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is important to remember that the people who determine it is OK to do these kinds of things are rendering opinions.
This isn't an actual court, this isn't SCOTUS. This is a bunch of people who work for you, who are already in agreement with what you're trying to do, rendering an opinion than it's okay to do it.
So when Alberto Gonzales gave the opinion that habeus corpus wasn't really a thing ... it was only an opinion, but one which then got used as if it was lawful. It also demonstrated a shocking level of incompetence to be the Attorney General.
Just because you can get a couple of cronies on your legal staff to give you an opinion, that in no way makes it fact. Because if you're appointing cronies who think you can crap all over the Constitutional rights of people, you can get an 'opinion' which authorizes pretty much anything.
If you put a bunch of authoritarian pricks in a room and ask them to come up with an opinion about what they can get away with, they will come up with a decision you'd expect from a bunch of authoritarian pricks.
Re:I can see it now... (Score:3, Insightful)
National security is no mere excuse.
Yes it is. National security only matters to the extent that the people say it matters, since the purpose of government is to do what the people want. If the people say that their right to privacy is more important than national security, then it's more important than national security, and that's all there is to it.
Re:I can see it now... (Score:5, Insightful)
It was classified because spying on all of America was illegal regardless of the three letter group doing it, but especially the NSA.
Is it illegal to break classification on something that is illegal?
Re:I can see it now... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, if the American people are denied the very knowledge that their government is acting in a way anathema to the interests of a free society, we cannot make a knowledgeable decision when we vote. The penultimate check and balance Americans have at their disposal will be based on opinions created with misinformation or no knowledge at all of what their chosen representative's are actually doing.
The American public cannot be left in the dark and still make informed decisions when we choose the people to represent us in government.