Are US Courts 'Going Dark'? (justsecurity.org) 163
An anonymous reader writes: Judge Stephen Wm. Smith argues that questions about the government's "golden age of surveillance" miss an equally significant trend: that the U.S. Courts are "going dark". In a new editorial, he writes that "Before the digital age, executed search warrants were routinely placed on the court docket available for public inspection," but after the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, more than 30,000 secret court surveillance orders were given just in 2006. He predicts that today's figure is more than double, "And those figures do not include surveillance orders obtained by state and local authorities, who handle more than 15 times the number of felony investigations that the feds do. Based on that ratio, the annual rate of secret surveillance orders by federal and state courts combined could easily exceed half a million."
Judge Smith also cites an increase in cases -- even civil cases -- that are completely sealed, but also an increase in "private arbitration" and other ways of resolving disputes which are shielded from the public eye. "Employers, Internet service providers, and consumer lenders have led a mass exodus from the court system. By the click of a mouse or tick of a box, the American public is constantly inveigled to divert the enforcement of its legal rights to venues closed off from public scrutiny. Justice is becoming privatized, like so many other formerly public goods turned over to invisible hands -- electricity, water, education, prisons, highways, the military."
The judge's conclusion? "Over the last 40 years, secrecy in all aspects of the judicial process has risen to literally unprecedented levels. "
Judge Smith also cites an increase in cases -- even civil cases -- that are completely sealed, but also an increase in "private arbitration" and other ways of resolving disputes which are shielded from the public eye. "Employers, Internet service providers, and consumer lenders have led a mass exodus from the court system. By the click of a mouse or tick of a box, the American public is constantly inveigled to divert the enforcement of its legal rights to venues closed off from public scrutiny. Justice is becoming privatized, like so many other formerly public goods turned over to invisible hands -- electricity, water, education, prisons, highways, the military."
The judge's conclusion? "Over the last 40 years, secrecy in all aspects of the judicial process has risen to literally unprecedented levels. "
And for good reason (Score:3, Insightful)
Most private citizens want their legal proceedings private. After all, we've already seen what "a matter of public record" leads to: mugshot websites, voter harassment, and your collected information available to the highest bidder.
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Making it "private" only increases the market value of your information, and puts it in the hands of black market criminals.
More of an issue for litigation that criminality (Score:2)
This is more of an issue (in some ways) for litigation. Criminal information will be public for a long time yet; there is too much interest in being able to run background checks. It would be great if we had better laws allowing records to be expunged after a certain number of years, but too many upper-middle-class people have so little exposure to law enforcement (or have such limited time) that they use "has an arrest record" as a proxy for "will be a bad employee/tenant/etc..."
But on the civil side, on
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Re:More of an issue for litigation that criminalit (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm kind of partial to the courts being public by default. It's hard to uphold our end of the social contract, which is to observe and ensure justice is being served, if we're not privy to the proceedings, judgment, and sentencing. It is, after all, our duty to make sure that the justice being done in our name is actually just. Default to public and do what we can to ensure all possible information is public with very few exceptions. Secret courts have, historically, been bad ideas.
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There is no 'privacy' aspect to anything you have described. It's an open court, and the local gossip knows what was said in it. The reason it's an open court is precisely so that everyone WILL know about it. A closed court is a star chamber. Meanwhile anyone who wants to look up my address can check the electoral roll. My phone number is in the book.
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Transparency is better than the alternative. Analyze any case (general case, not a specific example) and transparency benefits more people than secrecy would. Secret military undertaking? Benefits the smaller/weaker side, or a few politicians who would lose political position because of majority opinion. Secret financial transactions? Benefits those who might otherwise be taxed. Secret sexual affair? Generally benefits the involved parties at the expense of larger families or groups.
Secret of Santa?
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Stop referring to Privacy as a secret. People are entitled to privacy. We need to recognize that public record shouldn't mean searchable by typing in google in every case. There are some things that absolutely should be and others, like someones divorce decree (easily the most hostile court filing often with false and defamatory information) that has no public value in 99.999999% of cases.
I'm ok with where the court system determines some public court record being on the internet violates personal privacy a
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When everyone's dirty laundry is readily available, having some stupid court filing on public display won't be as damaging as it is today.
Today, even little things can be used as blackmail. When everyone's human failings are readily apparent, that won't really hold water anymore.
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Revealing my identity keys to someone who would use them to impersonate me is the opposite of a transparent action. False impersonation should remain a crime, if transparency is to have any value.
Re:And for good reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Currently, I am on the receiving end of what I consider to a nuisance lawsuit. Someone went to the same school years ago as I was working on a graduate degree became upset because I called him an "ass", "fool", and an "embarrassment" when he set up a conference where he invites a speaker who was expressing that society had a runaway problem with witches.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/287... [scribd.com]
The complaint is a train wreck, and I made a point of publishing it in several locations. The plaintiff had a fit and has been attempting to have them taken down. Fortunately, these are public documents and he has had limited success in these efforts. The amended complaint was served to me almost a year ago, and it quickly became clear that the plaintiff does not want the case to go to any type of decision, instead he is delaying over and over again (still waiting to hearing on a motion to dismiss submitted 10 months ago).
While I would love to have my day in court so that this mess can finally be put to bed, I do find some comfort while I wait to be able to show others the details of the 'claims' being made against me (and the school, plus a dozen or so other individuals).
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Re:And for good reason (Score:4, Informative)
You can't drop a case when the other person is the plaintiff.
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This group brings the persecution on itself....
Nice way to legitimize your hate. The argument of "they bring it on themselves" can be used on just about any group if you cherry pick the topic. Truth be told I've met many Christians from a variety of churches and haven't met anyone advocating a Theocracy. But I haven't been everywhere so maybe your area is different, though I find it hard to imagine that more than a small fringe would really want a Theocracy.
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rejecting AP History for speeches like "the sermon known as"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"" [state.ok.us]
OK Reps using their authority in attempting to ban "anti-Biblical plays" [newsok.com]
The 10 Commandments monument was directly against the OK Constitution, so now their attempting to change it. [newsok.com] Highly ironic seeing the divorce rate of many of their members.
Counter this with our courts saying Forced sodomy isn't illegal if [oklahomawatch.org]
Re:And for good reason (Score:4, Interesting)
Most private citizens want their legal proceedings private. After all, we've already seen what "a matter of public record" leads to: mugshot websites, voter harassment, and your collected information available to the highest bidder.
I think this is talking about more than just court records. This is talking about all the companies that make you waive your rights and instead are forced to use arbitration of their choosing. The easy solution for court records is to put them as a paper copy in a building and don't allow cameras. This would at least make them somewhat private for the average citizen. The easy solution for arbitration is to not allow it unless both parties agree. And I mean actually agree at the time of disagreement not some boilerplate agreement that is signed or clicked at the beginning in order to get service. For the most part, a person shouldn't be allowed to sign away their rights to sue in court. In certain situations like horseback riding, parachuting, etc... you assume certain risks when you do the activity but that's not the same as signing away your rights to sue if for instance they forget to pack a parachute in your bag.
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>but that's not the same as signing away your rights to sue if for instance they forget to pack a parachute in your bag.
If they forget to pack your parachute... and you can still sue that would be pretty miraculous. They could argue that such an agreement prevents your family from suing but I'm fairly certain a sane judge will rule that they can't enforce the arbitration agreement on your family (who does, after all, have standing to sue for gross negligence and wrongful death) since they never signed th
Re:And for good reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. TFA was quite clear that the problem is rampant in CRIMINAL trials, which are guaranteed by the Constitution to be PUBLIC trails. The intent behind that is to make the courts open enough that a citizen can satisfy himself that the trials are fair. It also defies the constitutional right for the defendant to see the evidence against him (ALL of the evidence) and rebut it.
These aren't nit-picks, the secrecy undermines the legitimacy of the entire court system. I find it disturbing that anyone could manage to become a judge and either not understand that or not care.
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I agree. Sure there are some abuses in the form of mugshot websites and the like. The alternative is very fundamental systemic abused could go uncaught forever!
Would we have an "Innocence Project" if court records were less public and it had not been possible to see systemic bias in justice from data?
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That's a perfect example that the need and benefit is more than theoretical.
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> I find it disturbing that anyone could manage to become a judge and either not understand that or not care.
In plenty of states judges are elected. That's one way to get incompetent people on the bench. Oh and did you know that the majority of judicial elections are uncontested ? A complete idiot can run and be guaranteed of getting a cushy job as a judge after scraping past the bar exam on his 14th try because nobody else is running and him and his mother are the only people who bothered to go vote...
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That might have worked at one time, but the very nature of communities has changed to the point that it's not really a viable way to choose a viable judge these days.
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I'm not in favour of it at all (in case that wasn't clear from my post). Maybe it was viable once, I don't have the information to form an opinion, but today it's a disaster. Judges get a lot of job security and leeway, exactly to ensure their impartiality - but this also means they should be selected with care. Preferably by people who have already gone through the process and can adjudicate their legal expertise and fairmindedness from an expert position. Judicial councils are a much better system. Probab
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The danger of judicial councils is forming an echo chamber but I honestly don't have a better answer.
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Around here, judges usually leave office by resigning during their term, and having a replacement appointed. A lot of people simply vote for the incumbent judge, so what we've got is appointive judges with the ability to recall every eight years or so. Your complete idiot could register and be a candidate, but the incumbent would win (and there's virtually always an incumbent).
Re: And for good reason (Score:2)
Your mistake is thinking the incumbent was not the complete idiot.
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The incumbent was almost certainly appointed with a reasonable selection process, and therefore is almost never a complete idiot.
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Erm - judicial elections, where they exist, have been around for centuries. They aren't a new invention replacing more typical selection processes that were in place within our lifetime. The incumbent was either elected or appointed BY somebody elected. The length of the chain may vary but it does nothing about idiot likelihood, quite the opposite in fact. When a single judge chooses the next judge (as opposed to a council) he is incredibly likely to choose one that shares his personal idiocies.
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Which is one reason why judges don't choose their successors. Where I live, there is a process involving multiple people to make recommendations. It does a good job of keeping the complete idiots out.
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Then it's not really a region of elected justices is it ? If actual elections basically never happen ?
Surely then you cannot take your region as representative of those where they are frequent events ?
Re:And for good reason (Score:5, Insightful)
No Kidding.
Frankly civil trials should also be fully public, it might help curb a lot of the abuses by big business if they knew they couldn't hide behind a "secrecy" agreement
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Agreed. I can understand why a plaintiff might be up against the wall enough to accept a secrecy clause in a settlement, but it is against the public interest to keep others in the dark about the past bad behavior of the defendant.
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The only legal proceedings I have even been involved with, the _other_ party wanted private. In general, I am willing and proud to have my disputes available for all to see. In general, I would think that the party seeking privacy - especially secrecy - is implicitly admitting guilt of some kind.
United States of America: (Score:5, Insightful)
Land of the [Redacted].
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Requiem for the American Dream (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at the big picture. Examine what has happened to the USA over the last 40 years. Watch Requiem for the American Dream on Netflix. You will begin to realize that what has happened over this time is that the most wealthy have been stealing back the power we wrested from them over the last century. They are stealing back wealth from the middle class. They are stealing back influence over the government, the state. They are corrupting our academics. They are stealing and corrupting our culture. Call it corporate control. Name it with whatever buzzwords you want. But remember what it really is: the most wealthy are seeking total domination over the rest of us. And judging by much of the discourse on discussions like this, they have achieved some success.
I suppose we can be consoled in that the middle class was able to wrest power from the most wealthy in the first place. We are many, and they are necessarily few. We must learn to be strong again. We must learn to free our minds, to educate ourselves about history, politics, and philosophy. Above all we must fight the pervasive cynicism that so weakens us. Cynicism is for the weak.
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The Romans did it extremely well.
The British empire as well.
Now the American empire is using the same tactic against its own people.
Combine those tactics with essentially full time monitoring of all online and almost all offline activities, opinions, etc.
Throw in some drone and
The "Dark" side of information access (Score:5, Insightful)
Previously, the amount of information gleamable was limited by the need to have physical access to the court. Someone would have to go down to the courthouse, hall of records, or similar location, and physically look at things. Now, one button and the entire country is searchable.
Unfortunately, this ease of information access removes the grey area of "public, but requires time/effort to get and is not easily accessible," and as a result, it's a lot more black and white. The parallels with massive aggregation of data, Hack Once Break Everywhere security issues, and even physical access to an iPhone by the FBI being sufficient or insufficient to overcome local security options, are all similar technological areas where a dichotomy is coming into play.
I can't say I think this is a good thing. Grey areas are good. Humans are grey, and technical models of human society should have grey considerations as well.
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The government has been exploiting all of this easy information to prosecute (or even persecute) people. Now they are seeing it work both ways and they're having second thoughts.
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Previously, the amount of information gleamable was limited by the need to have physical access to the court. Someone would have to go down to the courthouse, hall of records, or similar location, and physically look at things. Now, one button and the entire country is searchable.
Unfortunately, this ease of information access removes the grey area of "public, but requires time/effort to get and is not easily accessible," and as a result, it's a lot more black and white. The parallels with massive aggregation of data, Hack Once Break Everywhere security issues, and even physical access to an iPhone by the FBI being sufficient or insufficient to overcome local security options, are all similar technological areas where a dichotomy is coming into play.
I can't say I think this is a good thing. Grey areas are good. Humans are grey, and technical models of human society should have grey considerations as well.
Personal information can easily be redacted and the records still made available online.
Data aggregation is also a very positive thing since it gives information on the trends in society.
The absolute worst thing is to hide the information away and carry out these activities in secret.
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I can't say I think this is a good thing. Grey areas are good. Humans are grey, and technical models of human society should have grey considerations as well.
And how - short of turning back time - would we achieve that? Like 25 years ago "sexting" was not a problem because we didn't have cell phones or digicams, but short of the Amish nobody wants to go back there. The only question is how you go forwards, whether it's wailing and moaning about how things were better before or not and if you got any meaningful choices going forward.
I don't think you could will the gray areas back even if you wanted to. Maybe the question is as simple as choosing black or white?
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And how - short of turning back time - would we achieve that?
European style privacy laws. Europe doesn't have extortion web sites listing people's arrests and convictions because they would be illegal. Even though old newspaper articles can still appear online, people can request that search engines not link them to their name if the law deems the issue irrelevant or out of date.
Despite all the outrage and people screaming that it wouldn't work, it has had no impact on journalism and works very well.
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The problem is information asymmetry. Rather than trying to put the genie back in the bottle of ubiquitous privacy, instead we need to shine light (via legal or extralegal methods) into the darkest recesses of public servants, ceos, silver spoons, and politicians private lives. Once nobody has anything to hide (because it is all out in the open) we will be in a better position to judge both laws and people on their merits rather than the weasel-worded ideals projected to us.
And how does that work exactly, the NSA spies on everybody so everybody spies on the NSA? Any scandalized politician will just retire early from politics and get a cushy job for a lobby interest they pushed, no questions asked. Outing people just swap out the talking heads, the system stays the same. And if you think it's ever coming to some sort of reckoning and scaling back of the surveillance society it's not happening, they'll just carve out some more legal exceptions and make more privacy-invading addi
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As Rob Ford showed, scandal doesn't even hurt some of these arseholes. Get caught smoking crack, deny, admit, ask for forgiveness, repeat, and the tough on crime right is suddenly forgiving.
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Snowden revealed a lot of information about US agencies spying on US citizens. Unfortunately, he also revealed a lot of information about US agencies spying abroad, and I think that made a very bad impression on lots of people.
inveigled (Score:2)
I wish ... (Score:4, Funny)
Take a look at the patent courts (Score:2)
Is it any surprise anyone doing business would want to get away from public courts that are often arbitrary and capricious ?
Capricious? Arbitrary? Sounds like Arbitration. (Score:2)
Without any need for due process or impartiality, they walk all over people.
If that's what you want, you're probably involved in that industry.
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I don't think capricious and arbitrary mean what you think they mean. Arbitration is not capricious and arbitrary, it is heavily slanted in favor of the organizations that choose the arbitrator. That's predictable and planned, nearly the opposite of capricious and arbitrary.
This is how it starts (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget what you think a police state or authoritarian hellhole looks like, secret courts are really it. The justice system is where you're supposed to be able to make your case against charges, where bad laws are struck down, where the truth is revealed, you have a constitutional right to face the evidence, whether it's facts gathered or people, or a video recording, the second that system gets locked behind "National Security", such as many of the laws are where you can't even find out which one you broke because those very laws are secret themselves. If you can't cross examine the evidence and the law, question it in every detail, and do so in a public manner is when you know you're really in a dog and pony show and not a court. These systems set a terrifying precedent, they should've been disbanded and dissolved years ago, allowing them to continue just enables our decent into a totalitarian state, and once that happens, it will be hell to get out of, especially with technology being abused to get us there.
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>Men in the UK have to face rape charges from women who can remain anonymous
Considering that every legitimate study and every reliable piece of data suggests that less than one in a million rape charges are falsely filed, this is really not a major concern. the fact that less than one in 20 actual rapes get reported at all - now that's a problem.
See, it's impossible for false rape charges to be a problem AND for rapes to be hugely underreported with a terribly low conviction rate and frequently followed
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Considering that every legitimate study and every reliable piece of data suggests that less than one in a million rape charges are falsely filed, this is really not a major concern. the fact that less than one in 20 actual rapes get reported at all - now that's a problem.
According to http://rapecrisis.org.uk/stati... [rapecrisis.org.uk] in England and Wales you get on average 97,000 rapes a year, lets push that to 100 for numbers sake and you get one false rape claim every ten years? Is that what you're saying? Even double it to count Scotland and NI to cover the whole UK and that's 1 false claim every 5 years, which I would put to you is bullshit. Where are your studies and evidence because I've never heard that before? Maybe 1 in 10 is false, maybe even 1 in 100, maybe 1 in 1,000 if you take
Re: This is how it starts (Score:2)
1 in a million worldwide. I never said "in the UK"
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>I've been accused of rape 3 times by 3 different women all of them false.
Unlikely, in fact, SO unlikely I am convinced by the mere fact you stated that they were all TRUE - and you are just another rapist bastard who beat the system.
If there is any question about consent - you are guilty. Anything other than a sober, intentional "yes please" is rape.
If I can have lots and lots of sex while only ever touching a woman who has expressed a specific desire for said touching while of sound mind - then so can
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> If it is true then as soon as a woman makes an accusation the man should simply be charged and sent straight to jail.
That's bullshit. Most rapes that *do* go to court are of the "violent stranger in the bushes" variety, where there is never any doubt that the rape occurred and the trials center almost entirely on "was THIS the man in the bushes or was it somebody else" ? Something determined by physical evidence. The cases where the man claims the sex was consensual are fairly rare, and most rapes like
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There are no good statistics. It's often impossible to determine consent or non-consent beyond a reasonable doubt, meaning that it's often hard to determine whether a given sex act is rape or if the accusation is false. Without a reliable way to tell if there was consent or not, it's simply not possible to come up with good stats on how many of these accusations are true or false.
In some cases, rape victims have been vilified, but in many cases there's not going to be a penalty for a false accusation.
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Oh come on, men who actually plead guilty get away with a slap on the wrist.
Take this guy for example - pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting and attempting to rape a 15 year old girl (he was more than 10 years older) and got away with a fine... a fucking fine, and he still has a high paying job - which includes being the public spokesman for his company !
http://mg.co.za/article/2007-1... [mg.co.za]
Considering how mild the punishments are for people who are guilty (and even admitted it in court by pleading guilty)...
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I am aware of much of what you said, but I think you're partly wrong on false accusations.
Rape is not something the victim has control over. False accusations are things the accuser has control over, and that's why a false accuser isn't going to be in the position of the victim you talked about. I maintain that was an unusually bad case of victim-blaming (not that victim-blaming is rare, unfortunately), and that's why you picked it.
People are sometimes falsely accused of rape (such as the Duke lacros [wikipedia.org]
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>both people are guilty of rape
True - but in that case it doesn't make much sense to prosecute either one and generally neither are.
>both my wife and I have raped each other by initiating sex without spoken consent.
Nowhere did I say it has to be a VERBAL yes, though whenever you are with somebody you do not know very well you SHOULD insist on that. It's one thing to read non-verbal qeues from a spouse you know well - it's quite another with somebody else, and it's way to easy to claim you misinterpret
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such as many of the laws are where you can't even find out which one you broke because those very laws are secret themselves.
A secret law is no law at all. If a law is secret it can only regulate the actions of those who have clearance to the secrets, and thus the laws themselves.
Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law and that is right, but how can they expect you to obey they law if they won't tell you what it is? I suppose that just makes convictions easier.
Re:This is how it starts (Score:4, Interesting)
Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law and that is right, but how can they expect you to obey they law if they won't tell you what it is?
The error here is in the premise. Ignorance is a perfectly good excuse when the law is secret, or else so complex that one one can reasonably be expected to be familiar with all the rules and regulations and legal precedents applicable to their actions or how they are likely to be interpreted. The concept that "ignorance is no excuse" dates back to a time when the entire law could be inscribed on a sign and posted in the village square. Even putting aside laws which are not freely available to the public (e.g. building codes) or outright secret, the wild proliferation of the legal system into a mass of overlapping and conflicting laws governing every aspect of modern life—more often than not accompanied by punishments far out of proportion to the supposed crimes—has rendered that argument obsolete. Ignorance can no longer be considered a matter of negligence.
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arbitration != court (Score:5, Insightful)
Sealing legal proceedings before a public court is an outrage in a democracy; the application of government force must remain open in a democracy.
For people to resolve their disputes by private arbitration, however, is fine; that's a private choice and no government force is involved; therefore, there is no justification or need to have such resolutions be public.
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Increasingly arbitration is written into all sorts of contracts. Oral surgeon for wisdom teeth demanded it. Cell phone plans demand it. And so on. As a lowly individual you generally can do nothing when all the viable vendors ask you to opt out of the court system as a condition of doing business.
I don't think it should be allowed in such lopsided situations as a major corporation and a lowly individual.
Hell, I think most EULA's should be nullified.
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Your oral surgeon isn't a "major corporation", and wisdom teeth extraction is risky; you could drag him through the courts for years, ruining his practice, simply because of some accident.
So what? If you don't like your cell phone company, you switch, end of story.
Ther
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Which cell companies don't have arbitration clauses? We have large segments of the business world who have all made similar requirements. You can't simply go down the road, as they are all doing it.
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You misunderstood. I'm not saying that you can switch to a cell company that doesn't have arbitration clauses, I'm saying that disputes involving cell companies are best solved by simply switching companies. I don't want to have to pay more for cell service because you are hell bent on suing my cell company for millions in damages over some triviality.
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I've run across reports of instances where the company wouldn't let you drop the service, and the bank went along with them. I don't know how common that is, but the only way to find out is something I don't want to experience.
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Yes, if you sign a multi-year contract with a company, you are stuck with it (unless you declare bankruptcy). What is wrong with that?
US companies and courts are actually exceptionally lenient in this regard compared to, say, Europe.
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Who said anything about a "multi-year contract"? It wasn't me, and that's not what I was talking about. The excuse was "on-going financial relationship", not a term contract. You are in danger of this whenever you allow automatic payment of a monthly bill. You can get out of it by canceling the credit card, because you don't really owe any money. But the bank just wouldn't stop paying just because you told them to, and the service wouldn't allow you to unsubscribe.
As I said, I don't know how common thi
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And you won't be able to get out of this with a lawsuit either because no lawyer is going to take such a case. The correct solution is to (1) not let companies withdraw money directly from your account, and (2) for direct credit card billing, get a new card and optionally dispute the charges. If you were foolish enough to set up direct withdrawal and people are abusing that, you need to c
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That's true for all dispute resolution mechanisms. In fact, courts and regulators have their own biases.
And as I see it, many lawsuits are attempts by greedy individu
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Saying " it's important to ensure [arbitration] is fair, " doesn't change the existing situation. I can, in principle, understand that it could, if properly done, be a superior system to the court system. But currently it's only being properly done if you're the person/group choosing the arbitrator. And that doesn't describe the customer of a corporation.
Additionally, one could argue that the court system would be far superior if it were properly done. And that is also true. But currently the courts ar
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I find the current court system highly biased against me as a customer, because it favors greedy lawyers and greedy individuals enriching themselves at my expense.
And that is one of many reasons why t
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I thought I was pretty clear about that: I find the current court system highly biased against me as a customer, because it favors greedy lawyers and greedy individuals enriching themselves at my expense.
But let me try again more slowly.
It is very unlikely that I'm going to sue my doctor, my phone company, or my employer. But when other people drag these institutions through the courts, their pr
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For people to resolve their disputes by private arbitration, however, is fine; that's a private choice and no government force is involved; therefore, there is no justification or need to have such resolutions be public.
Unless, of course, you're going on Judge Judy.
Terrorists!!! (Score:4, Funny)
We all know that only terrorists and commies wanna see what's goin' on deep in the hallowed halls of our sacred legal system!!
I was wondering how the increase in lawyers (Score:4, Interesting)
The solution: Arbitration. Congress past a law which the SCOTUS upheld (they kinda had to, the law is pretty clear and there's nothing in the constitution to bar it). We're all forced to sign away our rights in exchange for employment and essential services. But that hasn't solved the problem of too many lawyers. I wonder what the next stop on their whirlwind tour of fun will be.
I'm guessing they'll turn on the public at large. A buddy of mine got caught without car insurance and got in a wreck (he was paying his premiums with money orders and one of the drones at the payment processing center stole his last money order. Being already a high risk driver his insurance company took that opportunity to cancel his plan without notice). Ten years ago it would have been a loss to the insurance company. Now? A lawyer sued, one a default judgement and my buddy's screwed for the next 20-30 years. But they'll run out of easy targets like my poor shlob of a friend soon. It's gonna get real nasty real fast.
Lawyers and the public good (Score:4, Interesting)
I was wondering how the increase in lawyers graduating from schools was going to play out. As college costs crept up and profit motive took over the schools were cranking out law graduates because it's dirt cheap to make a lawyer compared to a doctor. Pretty soon we were going to have far more trained lawyers than we needed. Think of it: millions of young, well trained law school grads with $80k+ in debt and no job prospects whatsoever. They were bound to go after corporate America in a massive frenzy of class action lawsuits.
And yet, with all the lawyers in the country that are under-utilized, we see nothing comparable to the "open source" movement.
Engineers get together and create massive public value in works such as Mozilla, Apache, and LibreOffice. Lesser projects abound, free for use by anyone.
With all the abuse we take from the government and the expense of taking something to court, you would think that some of these lawyers with spare time on their hands would take an interesting case and litigate it for cost. Not the $450/hr they charge, but just the court fees.
The could build a portfolio of experience and reputation, something that would attract paying customers and perhaps donations from benefactors.
I read about one (count them - one!) lawyer who set up a house with grow lamps [reason.com], trying to catch the cops using thermal cameras with no probable cause.
One lawyer did one smart setup in ten years or so.
If the cops knew that there might be lawyer stings, but didn't know where they were or what they might be, there'd be a *lot* less abuse.
On the plus side (Score:2)
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a default judgement
Um, the plaintiff has to accept some responsibility for letting that happen.
Hide it now, we'll find it later (Score:3)
They’ve gotten addicted to secrecy (Score:4, Insightful)
Years ago, the government sought to keep sources and methods classified so they could keep using them. OK, maybe that made sense.
But now, it’s routine for the government to deem evidence secret, or want secret access to someone’s data. We allowed private companies to gather information on everything we do, and now the government wants access to that information, ant secret access no less.
What have they got to fear? If the government is going to investigate me for software piracy and they want my ISP’s records, where is the harm in my being made aware of that? Shouldn’t I be able to plan for my defense?
Just as we’ve trained the police to view the citizen not as part of the community, but as the enemy, the government has taken secrecy tactics should only apply to terrorist suspects under active surveillance and used them against the populace at large.
Then hold them to the same standard. (Score:2)
For the privatized portions, require reasonable and nondiscriminatory (RAND) access in a manner identical to public records.
Really Evil System (Score:3)
Slippery slope (Score:2)
The first steps to a totalitarian dictatorship.
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.22 rounds cost next to nothing. Why bother?
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.22 rounds cost next to nothing. Why bother?
Because they're next to impossible to find around here.
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It's a bad sign that people are buying up and hoarding .22 rounds. It used to be nothing to go pick up 500 rounds of .22 ammo but a lot of places limit you to 200 rounds if you can even find it. The .22 is the survivalist's weapon of choice. Cheap, quiet and deadly in the right hands.
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It's a bad sign that people are buying up and hoarding .22 rounds.
I know...a friend of mine and I have been looking for months and months. Every store around is sold out all the time. It comes in and it's instantly bought up.
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So you're the one! Hoarder!
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Of what? Not cheating in football for sure. The Pats make Hillary look honest.