
Provider Fighting Secret Surveillance Order Denied Access to Relevant Law - rosser
https://medium.com/digital-freedom/as-a-provider-fought-a-secret-surveillance-order-court-denied-it-access-to-relevant-law-c4e2daa3474d
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rayiner
The court is wrong that this is not a Due Process Clause violation. Secret
laws are anathema to the Anglo-American view of due process. And in a common
law system legal opinions are "law" just as much as statutes. Beyond that, the
court's reasoning that a litigant should trust the other side's
characterization of a case turns the concept of adversarial litigation on its
head. It's a laughable view.

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jwfxpr
Original EFF blog post without Medium's login interstitial:
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/provider-fought-
secret...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/provider-fought-secret-
surveillance-order-court-denied-it-access-relevant-law)

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DiabloD3
Made it to the front page for a tiny bit, too:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14565062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14565062)

Hoping a good conversation about it happens this time.

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olegkikin
This is madness. How can we have secret laws? Do we take some secret court
judge's word?

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oh_sigh
We don't have secret laws, we have secret opinions on public laws.

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leesalminen
Doesn't that have the same net result as secret law? Legal opinions lead to
precedence which is basically "law" in court, no?

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schoen
I think you mean "precedent" or "precedents" rather than "precedence".

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leesalminen
I do! Thank you for the correction (no sarcasm). I had no idea.

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drtillberg
Instead of an Article III court, that sounds like an ex parte conversation
predating the matter, which the judge is using to decide the matter, which is
not ok. If this really is required by Congress, judges ought to give serious
thought to whether accepting an appointment to the FISC is consistent with
their ethical duties, I.e., "A judge should not ... accept ... an appointment
if the judge’s governmental duties would tend to undermine the public
confidence in the integrity, impartiality, or independence of the judiciary."
That article III judges are willing to administer procedure like that gives
pause.

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wfunction
Why is this not getting press coverage? This looks like a huge deal...

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AndyMcConachie
Title is a bit misleading. The court didn't deny access to statute. The court
denied access to opinions issued by the FISC. This is still really terrible
because precedent is, in a way, just as important as statute in determining
legal outcomes. But it's a little bit different than what the title of TFA
would have you believe.

Yes, precedent can in some instances be considered 'law'. But to a non-legal
layperson it's not generally referred to as such. Most people when thinking
about what the 'law' is think about statute.

So it's still terrible, but the article headline is a bit misleading.

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ruffrey
Seems like a violation of the 6th amendment.

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MechEStudent
Sounds draconian and unconstitutional.

