U.S. defends secrecy of unique surveillance court

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

U.S. defends secrecy of unique surveillance court

WASHINGTON | Fri Jul 5, 2013 6:11pm EDT

(Reuters) - The Obama administration on Friday urged a secret U.S. court that oversees surveillance programs to reject a request by a civil liberties group to see court opinions used to underpin a massive phone records database.

Justice Department lawyers said in papers filed in the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the court's opinions are a unique exception to the wide access the public typically has to court records in the United States.

If the public had a right to any opinion from the surveillance court, the possible harms would be "real and significant, and, quite frankly, beyond debate," the lawyers wrote, citing earlier rulings from the court.

The American Civil Liberties Union had asked the court last month to release some of its opinions after Britain's Guardian newspaper revealed a massive U.S. government database of daily telephone call data, prompting a worldwide debate about the program's legality.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/05/us-usa-security-court-idUSBRE96410B20130705

[MotherPetrie]

1. We're just mushrooms to them... keep us in the dark and feed us bullshit

[Downwinder]

2. How do you cite unpublished rulings?

[ExCop-LawStudent]

4. In other courts

unpublished rulings are available from Lexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg Law.

For example:

Anderson v. State, No. 06–12–00200–CR, 2013 Tex. App. LEXIS 7975, 2013 WL 3329027, 2013 BL 172373 (Tex. App.--Texarkana June 28, 2013, no pet. h.) (not designated for publication).

All that an unpublished decision means is that it will not be published in a reporter, such as Southwestern Reporter 3d, and the use as an authority in court pleadings is limited.

They are still released publicly. The secret courts don't release anything, so the public has no idea what is going on.

[nebenaube]

3. It's just another Star Chamber...

Useless and corrupt.