

Meet the 16 People Responsible for Protecting Your Privacy - ck2
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/meet-16-people-responsible-protecting-your-privacy/66473/

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jstalin
The problem is the FISC is not adversarial. In a normal court, these judges
are used to dealing with the issues presented to them by both parties. Both
parties submit briefs, arguing both sides of the issue, and the judge applies
the facts and law to the case based on the issues presented to them by the
parties. Judges generally do not inject issues that aren't presented to them
by the parties.

In contrast, FISC is a one-sided event. Only the government presents its case
and asks the judge to make a decision without any opportunity for any other
party to make the other side of the argument. So it doesn't surprise me that
the judges are just approving what the government asks for. It's similar to a
legal default in any other court. When the other party doesn't show up, the
party that's standing there wins, no matter what their argument is. It's
automatic.

EDIT: I should say that this is _one of the problems_ with FISC court, not
just _the_ problem. A secret court is antithetical to an open and free society
in the first place.

~~~
tptacek
To repeat a comment downthread: I think the most deceptive thing about FISC is
that it's not really a court. It happens to be staffed with federal court
judges, and it can issue binding court orders on a limited set of subject
areas, but that's it; in every other way, FISC functions as a form of internal
review board.

FISC exists because there is no Constitutional anchor to policies regarding
foreign intelligence. Foreign powers do not have rights under the Fourth
Amendment. No state really requires its spies to get warrants for all their
foreign targets.

But in the wake of the Nixon administration, Congress decided it needed some
way to create and enforce policy for NSA. It can pass laws, but without an
ongoing process by which NSA's actions are forced to engage those laws, they'd
be toothless. So we get FISC, a sort of para-court.

------
cobrausn
The Atlantic is kinda kidding themselves if they think merely bringing on
Democratic judges would make it more 'balanced'. Both parties seem hostile to
privacy rights right now (or at least, the primary movers of each party do).

~~~
ck2
Well they are stating the facts.

But if a court for example is all white, male, republicans, you are in danger
of "dittoheads" cut from the same cloth.

Their names suggest 4 women which is almost acceptable. Cannot guess anything
else.

 _The minimal number of requests that are modified by the court has led
experts to characterize it as a rubber stamp. For example, Russell Tice, a
former National Security Agency analyst said "It is a kangaroo court with a
rubber stamp."_
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISA_Court#Criticism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISA_Court#Criticism)

One Democrat resigned: _On December 16, 2005, the New York Times reported that
the Bush administration had been conducting surveillance against US citizens
without the knowledge of the court since 2002. On December 20, 2005, Judge
James Robertson resigned his position with the court, apparently in protest of
the secret surveillance. The government 's apparent circumvention of the court
started prior to the increase in court-ordered modifications to warrant
requests._

~~~
Camillo
I can see the "republican" part, since they have to deal with requests from
the government, but "white" and "male"? Do sex and race really have _that_
much bearing on one's thinking about legal matters, especially at the
ostensibly high level of a federal court?

~~~
ck2
We have people stop-and-frisked for being black and people being taken off
planes for flying-while-muslim. You don't think race has anything to do with
how people experience things in this world?

~~~
cobrausn
I am straight, white, formerly republican, and find all of those things
apalling when they happen. I didn't need to get burned by the fire to
recognize that it burns.

~~~
gohrt
You are unfortunately a rare, um, breed.

~~~
cobrausn
Wait, did I just get racially profiled?

------
LowKarmaAccount
Although the U.S Supreme Court consists of men and women, whites, blacks, and
Latinos, Catholics and Jews, it is also very non-diverse. All nine of the U.S
Supreme Court justices attended either Harvard or Yale law school (Ruth Bader
Ginsburg transferred from Harvard to Columbia).

This means that what were probably the most formative years in the justices'
legal careers were all spent at the same institutions.

~~~
gohrt
It's a bit of stretch to say that highly intelligent 22-25 year olds were
brainwashed by their law schools. They had their lives' formative years before
they showed up at law school.

Sotomayor has commented quite a bit in that regard.

------
betterunix
Meet the FISC court - it has no diversity: 14 of 14 judges are major party.

Really, after all that has happened, why are we continuing to pretend that
Democrat vs. Republican actually matters here?

~~~
_delirium
The judges themselves aren't all members of any particular party. The article
is attributing judges to which President appointed them to the bench, and
since all Presidents in their lifetime have been Republicans or Democrats,
therefore all judges have been appointed by either a Republican or a Democrat.

------
pvnick
I don't give a shit if Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. sit on the FISC (FISC
court is redundant). America doesn't _do_ secret courts.

~~~
tptacek
It doesn't do secret Article III courts. That doesn't mean every review or
adjudication process in the government is public.

Most of the evidence I can find suggests that FISC isn't an Article III court.
It happens to be composed of appointed federal court judges, but that's as
close to "Article III-iness" as it gets.

Real Article III courts have judges appointed by the executive branch who sit
with lifetime tenure.

Instead, the word "court" in FISC turns out to be a little misleading. FISC
operates more in the manner of a review board. The Constitution doesn't set
out limits to foreign intelligence operations, and FISA ostensibly concerns
itself exclusively with foreign surveillance operations (and with the checks
that prevent foreign surveillance from "mission creeping" into domestic
surveillance, which is where things start to get fuzzy). The Constitution does
not require NSA to obtain warrants to surveil foreign targets (no country
really requires their spies to get warrants), and thus doesn't fundamentally
require NSA to get court authorization to do what it does.

Instead, FISC is a sort of half-measure intended to allow the Congress to have
some ongoing check over what NSA does, by passing laws and providing a body to
ensure that those laws are enforced.

------
tptacek
FISC judges are appointed by the (Republican) Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court from among the federal court judges, among whom Republicans outnumber
Democrats something like 100 to 60.

------
ck2
Apparently they have Wikipedia pages

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggie_Walton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggie_Walton)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_J._Dearie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_J._Dearie)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_M._Collyer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_M._Collyer)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Eagan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Eagan)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Leach-
Cross_Feldman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Leach-Cross_Feldman)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_F._Hogan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_F._Hogan)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_A._McLaughlin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_A._McLaughlin)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_W._Mosman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_W._Mosman)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Dennis_Saylor_IV](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Dennis_Saylor_IV)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Webber_Wright](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Webber_Wright)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Zagel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Zagel)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISA_Court#Criticism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISA_Court#Criticism)
<<<\--- apparently they were already known

~~~
brown9-2
The fact that the court is "secret" has never meant that it's membership was
secret, just that it's output is.

------
DanielBMarkham
I've noticed a particularly troubling trend among my friends who are rabidly
partisan. Now that some of these privacy issues are out in the open, there's a
desperation to pin it on the other party.

Just to be clear: as another commenter said, I don't give a rat's ass if the
court consists of the greatest figures in western science. We don't do secret
courts.

It's a serious mistake trying to turn this into the usual one party versus the
other thing. The U.S. got here because of _systemic_ problems; the system
itself has been set up in a bad way. The qualities of the people involved --
their party affiliation, their tax return status, whether they like cats or
not -- that's all bullshit. And we should call bullshit on folks who try to
change the subject in this manner.

I'll go even farther. I like the NSA. I think they do a great job, I think
they have some of the smartest people working in government right now, and I
think the country owes a humongous amount of gratitude towards them. If
anything, these guys are my heroes.

But that doesn't make the NSA spying right. If you tell the NSA to do fucked
up stuff, and you set up a system where they are encouraged and promoted for
doing fucked up stuff, you're going to have an agency full of awesome people
working as hard as they can to do fucked up stuff. They're not supposed to
_guide_ national intelligence gathering -- the policy, structure, and ethics
are created by congress and the president -- they're the ones _executing_ it.

If we want to fix what's wrong, we're going to need to get our head out of our
asses in regards to which team is better than the other and start talking
about structural changes that can bring intelligence gathering back in line to
where it's supposed to be.

~~~
etherael
> It's a serious mistake trying to turn this into the usual one party versus
> the other thing.

That depends what you mean by "mistake". Historically speaking, obfuscating
the real issues by slinging mud at the other guy and pretending you're
enormously different and it's not your problem has proven effective in
rallying the proles to fall in line, is it any surprise this would be a
continuously attempted tactic in this instance also?

~~~
rosser
It's also expedient for cattle ranchers in Brazil to slash-and-burn the Amazon
rainforest. Doesn't make it one bit less of a "mistake".

------
Balgair
Hmm, I can't seem to find a way to contact these judges. I'd love to mail them
a letter expressing my concerns and to voice my opinions to them. At least to
give their clerks a call and try to move towards positions I feel are more in
line with American culture. Anyone here got a list of numbers or addresses?

Edit: Found contact info for:

The Honorable Thomas F. Hogan U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse 333 Constitution Avenue, NW Washington,
DC 20001 (202) 354-3420

Chambers of Judge Reggie B. Walton's contact information: Telephone Number:
202-354-3290 Fax Number: 202-354-3292 Address: United States District Court
for the District of Columbia E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse 333
Constitution Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20001

Give a call folks!

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will_brown
I could not help but notice the name of the current presiding Judge John D.
Bates not included in the list. This link to the FISC Court rules names Judge
Bates on the Cover:
[http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/rules/FISC2010.pdf](http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/rules/FISC2010.pdf)

Judge Bates was originally nominated to the bench by GW Bush and obviously
appointed to FISC by Chief Justice Roberts.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Bates](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Bates))

~~~
acomar
According to the Wikipedia page, his term expired in February of this year.

~~~
will_brown
Where abouts? I am not seeing that.

I see Chief Justice Robert's appointed Judge Bates, effective July 1, 2013,
Director of the Administrative Offices of the United States Court. However,
that occurred June 11, 2013 and presumably he will continue to be the
presiding Judge of FISC until that time.

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wnevets
if they rubber stamp Obama's request, why does it matter?

~~~
influx
Yeah, if Republican Judges fall in line with a Democratic Executive, how will
make it "more diverse" really improve anything?

------
peterwwillis
I don't have sources at hand, but I recall reading that these judges only work
part time on FISC; they have additional case load to deal with. In addition,
law students that work for the judges (a standard practice, from what I
understand from a law student) probably go over the material and write their
opinions for them, and then they sign it.

I don't think it matters to them why the fuck the NSA wants to tap these
people, because they've got other shit to do and it's just phone numbers
they're looking up. Anyway, why would one party affiliation care more about it
than the other? Obama's a dem and he's pretty okay with warrantless
wiretapping.

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at-fates-hands
I have no idea what the purpose of this article is.

Exhibit A is the Supreme Court. Many of the judges who were appointed by
Republican presidents have turned out to be rather liberal.

Look no further than Justice Robert's (appointed by Bush in 2005) ruling on
the individual mandate when he sided with the other Liberal judges in
upholding its constitutionality.

------
ck2
_" Twelve of the 14 judges who have served this year on the most secret court
in America are Republicans and half are former prosecutors."_

More great coverage from The Atlantic shedding light on all this.

I'm going to have to subscribe.

~~~
sigzero
Uh why? Those "facts" really have very little at all to do with it. It's not
like if you change them to all Dems that suddenly it changes. It doesn't.

