Comment by NewJazz
17 hours ago
Once you have secret courts and secret warrants, secret interpretation of the law seems like a natural, if not necessary, progression.
17 hours ago
Once you have secret courts and secret warrants, secret interpretation of the law seems like a natural, if not necessary, progression.
This is basically it.
Imagine, for example, a case is about someone disclosing the location of nuclear arms to their spouse. Maybe even accidentally. If they are brought up on charges about this, national security doesn't want the fact that a case is about nuclear weapons to be public information. They further don't want it disclosed who was told about them (as the spouse wouldn't be subject to charges). That's basically where a secret interpretation and ruling would ultimately enter. The courts can't disclose what the ruling was nor what the case was even fully about.
Why can't they? They can redact names of individuals in a case like that. "Oh some person who was married to some other person who works for some agency knows where nukes might be". That's not a risk.
They could even redact larger portions of the case and still release the interpretation in some form.
Because it's very hard to stop accidental or incidental information leaks. For an opinion to be rendered, generally they also attach the case facts which lead to that ruling. Heavy redaction means it becomes almost impossible to use that ruling as precedent but also runs a real risk of exposing state secrets. For example, which judge made the ruling? Well if you get that you can start pulling information about the days the judge was active and a short list of the people the judge was hearing cases for.
All it takes is 1 accidental redaction or someone who did something silly like using a black highlighter on a PDF and now where the nukes are stored is public information.
There's also simply information that can be gleaned just based on the location that the hearing is taking place. This came from x court in x district, well then it's likely a nuclear silo is roughly in that county or surrounding counties.
2 replies →
A federal court tried to conceal the identity of a judge who has been reprimanded.
Claude was able to work out who it was in less than 10min based on stringing together facts that remained and seemed irrelevant. Journalists uncovered the identity independently using different means. (The ability of Claude to do this was not revealed until the other journalists had gone public and confirmed the identity.)
> Imagine, for example, a case is about someone disclosing the location of nuclear arms to their spouse.
The location of most US nuclear weapons are public. Moreover, if you suspect that the location of some you intend to be secret may have been compromised then the obvious sensible response is "move them" rather than "keep even the legal theory of the case a secret forever".
This is why the primary ones whose location is intended to be a secret are on submarines -- submarines are easy to move around.
This example requires a secret ruling but not a secret interpretation of the law.
I am the first generation out of a dictatorship, the belief some folks have in their democratic processes always amazes, there is no law when secret courts and secret warrants are a thing.
Yet for some strange reason folks think secret agencies are bound by the same laws as regular police officers.
It is called "the dual state" [0]
At least in nazi Germany, the state was explicitly designed like that. Most people should never come into contact with the prerogative state and spend their lives in the normative state, as capitalism doesn't work well in a prerogative state. You need to believe that punishment doesn't come arbitrarily in order to follow the rules.
But of course, things are very different in the prerogative state, where actions have unclear consequences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dual_State
From warrantless wiretapping to extra judicial renditions, the US government has been a rogue state for sometime. Now they just have low-grade criminals and racists running the show, buddied up with media owners, O&G and the mic.
Yeah but they are only targeting bad people, so it's OK.
Everything you ever do will go in a data center. Forever.
Bluffdale.
privacy is a luxury only afforded to the most deserving who clearly are worthy of digital god hood , toil in the mines prole and watch your tongue
Yeah but I don’t use my real name online. /s
I can get the idea that for some cases it can be in the public's interest if specific court hearings are closed, or if it's secret that certain court hearings or entire cases even exist. There is a lot of potential of abuse (and a documented history of abuse), but at least the idea makes sense
But I can't see a public benefit to keeping the principles such a court uses secret
Why would you assume there needs to be a public benefit?
It’s a pretty obvious outcome. Attorney-client privilege applies to the executive branch of the government as much as it applies to anyone else, and not just in national security matters.