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DOJ Accidentally Gives Lawyer Wiretap Transcript
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Jul 07, 2007 07:05 AM
from the terry-gilliam-to-make-the-movie dept.
from the terry-gilliam-to-make-the-movie dept.
good soldier svejk writes "'It could be a scene from Kafka or Brazil. Imagine a government agency, in a bureaucratic foul-up, accidentally gives you a copy of a document marked "top secret." And it contains a log of some of your private phone calls. You read it and ponder it and wonder what it all means. Then, two months later, the FBI shows up at your door, demands the document back and orders you to forget you ever saw it.' That is what happened to Washington D.C. attorney Wendell Belew. His lawsuit takes on special significance given today's Sixth Circuit Court ruling that surveillance victims can only sue the DOJ if they can prove they were affected."
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Court Orders Dismissal of US Wiretapping Lawsuit 362 comments
jcatcw writes with a link to a ComputerWorld article about the dismissal of a case against the NSA over the wiretapping program revealed last year. The case was brought by the ACLU. A three-judge panel in the Sixth Circuit has sent the case back down to District court for ultimate dismissal. "The appeals court decision leaves opponents of the NSA program in a difficult position, said Jim Dempsey, policy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group that has opposed the program. The appeals court ruled that the plaintiffs could not sue because they can't prove they were affected by the program, and at the same time, ruled that details about the program, including who was targeted, are state secrets."
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Standing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Standing (Score:5, Funny)
What version of RSS did Jefferson use again? I know Franklin was much more into ATOM.
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Pentagon Papers (Score:5, Insightful)
Brazil the movie (Score:5, Informative)
Thankyou (Score:5, Insightful)
Ordered to forget? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ordered to forget? (Score:5, Funny)
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An anti-corruption person in the DOJ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it was not an accident, but someone in government who wants to help stop the corruption.
Here's how messed up the DoJ is: (Score:5, Insightful)
Justice department lawyers have argued that, even if the pair of lawyers were monitored, judging the president's authority to do so requires looking at the specific reasons why the duo were surveilled. And those facts would be national secrets that would tip off terrorists, so no court can ever rule on the program.
"This is not to say there is no forum to air the weighty matters at issue, which remains a matter of considerable public interest and debate, but that the resolution of these issues must be left to the political branches of government," Justice Department lawyers wrote in a brief on the case.
They may as well have just taken a copy of the Constitution, shat all over it, and filed that as their legal brief. It's like they're arguing that the entire third article of the Constitution does not apply to them.
Fatal flaw... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it makes no difference to the case whatsoever, why they were monitored. Warrantless wiretapping is illegal and unconstitutional regardless of the reason for doing so.
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The "terrarists" have won (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever fuckhead bin laden's goal was, he has won. Your country might be safer from "terrarists" now, but it's also safer from opposition politicians, foreign students, dissenting opinions, real freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It is also safe from a stable, debt free economy. Your government has got itself suckered into two wars it will not and cannot win (did anyone really think the Taliban would just roll over and die? They're winning in Afghanistan too), but from which it cannot afford to withdraw. Your government has seriously endangered relations with a Russia that has had enough of being the USA's bitch, and which is now starting to seriously raise the stakes (do you really think you can wobble about fighting two bush wars and take on Russia too?)
And you know who is really laughing? The Chinese. They must be having hysterics. Every time Dick "Dick" Cheney opens his mouth for a round of anti-China drivel, everyone just has a good laugh. What can your country do about the Chinese military build up which is sure to challenge the USA later in this century? Nothing, absolutely nothing. China is so big and such a huge army and population that the USA could never, even if the Chinese did not have nuclear weapons, which they do, win a conflict. On top of that the USA economy is so tied into the Chinese economy that doing anything against China would seriously damage the American economy (Have to cut down on the SUVs a bit, and the clothers and just about all else too). The USA can't even play the Indians, China's natural foes, out against the Chinese because the Indians don't trust the USA either, and they find it easier to do business with Russia when it come to arms, because the Russians don't try to tell them how to run their country.
In closing, there are many, big bad problems in this world, and the longer Dick and Blow stay in power, the worse things will get for you. This is not an admonition to vote Democract or Libertarian or whatever other party you Americans have dreamt up, but it is a thought that perhaps voting for someone who wasn't so out to ruin his own country might be a good idea.
Re:The "terrarists" have won (Score:5, Funny)
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Doesn't change a thing in the courts view... (Score:5, Informative)
Remember, the court was using "Circular Logic" to drop the case. You can't sue because you can't prove you were harmed. You can't prove you were harmed because the documents you want are State Secrets and therefore can't be used. Of course, this is the kind of thing I would have expected to read in a Russian Court in the 1980's, no offense to our Comrades here.
Only if they can prove.... (Score:5, Funny)
- Hello, my name is Damocles [wikipedia.org], and I want to sue the emperor, because he got this f***ing Sword hanging above my head!
- Sorry, sir, but unless you've been hurt by that sword, you cannot sue.
- WTF?
- I'm sorry, sir. Good bye.
Not Like Kafka (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ha hah! (Score:5, Funny)
Watch, you'll see.
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Re:Ha hah! (Score:5, Insightful)
The Cold Warriors weren't stupid. They were seeking heavily guarded secrets about the machinations of a superpower. The stakes were, officially, the fate of freedom itself, not a building here or there. The best and the brightest. Those who never succeeded against an intelligent adversary were fired, or for the real spying, killed. But tell me that someone who 'fails to catch a terrorist plot' by attempting to find suspicious brown people is going to face any real accountability, ever. This war needs no victory, because defeat is impossible. It wouldn't really matter if the Directorate was increasingly brazen in deciding who to assassinate(which we do, officially, do now), because even on an agency level, they really can't lose face until 2009, no matter how often they fail. There will always be targets, and so there will always be work, and so they will always be heroes defending our safety. This is the culture of the War on Terror.
We the nation kidnap people around the world and torture them,
And then WE THE PEOPLE find out about it, through these monsters' incompetence - resulting in a medium-sized PR war between those that believe in human rights and those who don't, that's eventually lost because Mat Lauer needs an exclusive next week, no matter how much NBC News has to suck up to the administration. Then, the fact that we kidnap and torture people becomes passe, becomes something that people occasionally bitch about, but essentially accept.
What makes you think a domestic assassination would be any different?
I say this as someone normally allergic to tinhattery: Never put anything past these people. They will always surprise you with yet another step towards totalitarian fascism, something unthinkable yesterday, which will be mildly distasteful tomorrow.
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Re:Ha hah! (Score:5, Informative)
From Wikipedia: Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers individual and other societal interests subordinate to the needs of the state, and seeks to forge a type of national unity, usually based on, but not limited to, ethnic, cultural, or racial attributes. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, corporatism, collectivism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, racism and opposition to economic and political liberalism.
Who does that sound like ?
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Re:Ha hah! (Score:5, Informative)
Democracy is one of the tools we use to preserve freedom. It's not perfect, but it's one of the best we've found so far.
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still a democracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't entirely clear that the US is still a democracy - at least not in the sense of free and fair elections.
exit polls [wikipedia.org] are routinely used by international election monitors to determine whether elections have been rigged.
The last presidential election had disparities between the exit polls which are
at the least, unusual. [wikipedia.org]
Certainly, people get to vote - but it isn't clear that those votes are counted.
That's even before you get pernicious issues like gerymandering or campaign finance.
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Re:Ha hah! (Score:5, Interesting)
I know this is completely against everything that everyone loves to believe but, the truth of the matter is, the plug could've been pulled on the Third Reich at any time by the forefathers of the very same people who fund the world organizations that pull 90-year old men out of their modest middle class homes in the Midwest and ship them off to prison.
Profit margin wasn't any different then than it is now. The people who died under the oppression of the Third Reich were sold out, not by the Nazi party, but by their own upper class.
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Re:Old News? (Score:5, Informative)
Wendell Belew, a lawyer who represented a now banned Ashland, Oregon Muslim charity, says the government accidentally provided him with proof his conversations were eavesdropped on without a warrant. His case has a hearing in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in August. The government wants his, and all the other cases, thrown out, arguing they endanger national security.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/appeals-
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Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you're part of the problem.
Sure there's no warrant, but if there were a warrant, it would jeopardize the secrecy of the tap and the effectiveness of our intelligence. And in this case, there was every reason to listen in. The program was properly applied to help find terrorists.
They could have applied for a warrant under FISA, which would not have jeopardized the secrecy of the tap at all; all it would have done is made sure there was some judicial oversight of it.
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Re:Al-Haramain = Terrorists (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Obligatory: If you have nothing to hide... (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's just that pesky human rights stuff again and in the post 9-11 era we can't afford to be respecting human rights.
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