A secret court
by
Matt Giwer (c) 1996 <2/25>

      Only paranoids and New World Order nuts believe there are secret courts in the United States. And so far as anyone has produced solid evidence there are no secret courts in the United States. All the dangerous courts are hiding right out in the open.
      Some wags might say that putting something in the United States Code is as good as hiding it. The technical reference is Title 50, chapter 36, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance. (For the web literate browse http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/50/ch36.html#s1801.) Move on the 1803 of that and you will find
      The Chief Justice of the United States shall publicly designate seven district court judges from seven of the United States judicial circuits who shall constitute a court which shall have jurisdiction to hear applications for and grant orders approving electronic surveillance anywhere within the United States under the procedures set forth in this Act,1
      In other places in this act these orders are described as "sealed" that is, they are secret orders. The law notably lacks any verbiage limiting the use of this surveillance. Thus it can be used for any reason or no reason. It does not even require the invocation of the magic words "national security" to get this court to approve this electronic surveillance.
      In public arguments in favor of making all unapproved methods of encryption illegal, the government noted that in over 4000 such requests not one of them had been turned down. The government said this the result of scrupulously careful case work. If this is really a review process then may I suggest it is the result of inhumanly careful case work?
      We are talking 4000 to 0 here. The Japanese, the Soviet Union, hell even Nazi Germany did not have a record that good. But there is no need for such a comparison. Without a failure here and there, there is no way to distinguish between a review and no review. Meaning this is a sham. There is no protection whatsoever.
      Protection from what? From any form of electronic surveillance whatsoever for any purpose whatsoever. What was sold as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in fact has no limitation as to that purpose. And of course, as a result of the Oklahoma City bombing the call was and still is to make it stronger. It is not clear how to make an unlimited law stronger.
      Our 4th amendment protections vanish when the magic words, foreign intelligence, are invoked. It does not say "as relates to national security." It says merely foreign intelligence. The government already has the unrestrained power to monitor any form of communication occurring outside the US or any communication crossing national boundaries. This extends that power to within the United States.
      Considering there is no limitation as to foreign nationals within the US, that means it applies to US citizens. Of course only a paranoid or a true believer in the New World Order would take this seriously. After all there are protections built in, aren't there?
      The chain of this power is from initiation by the Attorney General, a political appointee, to these rubber stamp judges to a Congressional oversight committee. That works so well and never makes a mistake that we could save billions of dollars every year by using this system. We can dissolve a large part of our judicial system by switching to this form of protection of our 4th amendment rights.
      It is clear that in the name of curiosity about what Americans are doing or saying regarding anything outside the US the government has found one more way to circumvent the constitution. When it was passed we were told there would be safeguards against abuse. Now we discover those safeguards consist of a rubber stamp court and a congressional subcommittee.
      I hope you feel as protected as I do.
1My thanks to Tony Lauck for pointing me to this section.