and he also law school of media freedom and information clinic
filed a motion
with the foreign intelligence surveillance court seeking the release
of secret court opinions
that permit the government to acquire americans phone records on markets
this is dealing with
the first disclosure
which was a court order
and we don't know for sure but this is the suspicion is that it was simply a
reauthorization of an ongoing program in this instance we saw the court order we
authorizing verizon
to or ordering va rising to hand over all these phone records
the speculation is and i have not seen much pushing back against this is that
it's not just rising
it's all the phone carriers
and it's not just for this three month period it's been ongoing
but it needs to be reauthorize every three months
which seems rather robert reyrey
at this point
would make a difference if it was six months with negative ads there were nine
months what it was uh...
sixty days as opposed to ninety days it doesn't seem to matter
that centers around as we talked about with uh... marcy wheeler last week
section two fifteen of the patriot act
which allows the director of the f_d_a_ f_b_i_
to obtain seek record orders from the fis accord
compelling third parties that would be phone companies
and perhaps other entities that are involved in communicate
telecommunications any potential ball thing
which is quote relevant
to foreign intelligence or terrorism investigation
now the problem here is is that
relevant as a very broad term
tangible thing is a very broad term
and what the a_c_l_u_ and this clinic from the uh... yellow school are seeking
is what is the justification were what is in that black box
what is the function
that you take that law
and what is a legal reasoning that comes out the other side
though the real danger here in my estimation
is this secret law this regime of secret law
because
there is no oversight
when the supreme court rules on in interprets kaila or interprets the
constitution
there is a very explicit
mechanism for all of us
to understand how they achieved at that and result
we may disagree with that we may not agree that we may agree with it
but it is part of a broader political prop russets
we can then say okay i'm going to exercise my agency as a citizen
to aditi
get my
political representatives
to change that law
or
to and then the constitution
or to elect
uh... a president who's going to appoint judges who had a different perspective
on the constitution
those processes
rather uh... are less than a cute
insofar as
there's a lot of things that mock up that process
even beyond the fact that there may not be a majority of
other voters or citizens who agree with that opinion that i nail
even want to go so that process it is
uh... degraded by money and influence six at a rate sattar
but at least that process execs
at least we can take measure of where we are as a society
this type of
generation of law
is
incredibly problematic for democracy
because there is no prob part in that process as
as insignificant as it may be in feel at times
there is no part for us as citizens
and there is no oversight there are no checks and balances
to this
we also know now
that
this should give standing
for any challenges all of this program
as
there are millions of americans who have reason to say
the u_s_ government is violating my fourth amendment for a rights
of the literally hundreds of cases that emanated out of
the warrantless fire wiretapping
and the supposedly
warranted although i don't know that you can call that a warrant
by really any
with janet
definition of the term
the identity of the i don't know i don't know that you can actually say it's a
warrant if we
just can't
pull everybody's records
it seems that there is an opportunity for this to be questioned so heat it in
in in a court of law in this is just
the beginning
this
a c l_ u_ uh...
motion
or a guess
motion to too
find about
the legal reasoning behind this
is enough