This Week in "Privacy Rights"...The Travesty Calling Itself...

[KoKo]

The travesty calling itself "the Bradley Manning court-martial", the kangaroo tribunal calling itself "the FISA court", and the emptiness of what the Obama DOJ calls "your constitutional rights"

(1) In the utter travesty known as "the Bradley Manning court-martial proceeding", the military judge presiding over the proceeding yet again showed her virtually unbreakable loyalty to the US government's case by refusing to dismiss the most serious charge against the 25-year-old Army Private, one that carries a term of life in prison: "aiding and abetting the enemy". The government's theory is that because the documents Manning leaked were interesting to Osama bin Laden, he aided the enemy by disclosing them. Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler explained in the New Republic in March why this theory poses such a profound threat to basic press freedoms as it essentially converts all leaks, no matter the intent, into a form of treason.

At this point, that seems to be the feature, not a bug. Anyone looking for much more serious leaks than the one that Manning produced which ended up attracting the interest of bin Laden should be looking here. The Obama White House yesterday told Russia that it must not persecute "individuals and groups seeking to expose corruption" - as Bradley Manning faces life in prison for alerting the world to the war abuses and other profound acts of wrongdoing he discovered and as the unprecedented Obama war on whistleblowers rolls on. That lecture to Russia came in the context of White House threats to cancel a long-planned meeting over the Russian government's refusal to hand over NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to the US to face espionage charges.

(2) The kangaroo tribunal calling itself "the FISA court" yesterday approved another government request (please excuse the redundancy of that phrase: "the FISA court approved the government's request&quot . Specifically, the "court" approved the Obama administration's request for renewal of the order compelling Verizon to turn over to the NSA all phone records of all Americans, the disclosure of which on June 6 in this space began the series of NSA revelations. This ruling was proudly announced by the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which declassified parts of that program only after we published the court ruling. In response, the ACLU's privacy expert Chris Soghoian sarcastically observed: "good thing the totally not a rubberstamp FISA court is on the job, or we might turn into a surveillance state"; the Wall Street Journal's Tom Gara noted: "Reminder: The style guide for mentioning the FISA court is that it's written 'court' with scare quotes."

(3) In response to our NSA reporting, several groups, including the ACLU and EFF, filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the US government's spying programs. A federal court yesterday heard arguments in the suit brought by the ACLU, and the Obama DOJ asked the court to dismiss it on several grounds, including that it "cannot be challenged in a court of law".

(4) Speaking of the Obama DOJ attempting to block judicial adjudication of the legality of its actions: a different federal judge heard a lawsuit yesterday challenging the constitutionality of Obama's extra-judicial killings by drones of three American citizens, including the 16-year-old American-born Abdulrahaman Awlaki, whose grandfather wrote this powerful Op-Ed in the New York Times this week under the headline "The Drone That Killed My Grandson". The judge repeatedly expressed incredulity at the DOJ's argument that courts had no role to play in reviewing the legality of these killings, which then led to this exchange:

"'Are you saying that a US citizen targeted by the United States in a foreign country has no constitutional rights?' she asked Brian Hauck, a deputy assistant attorney general. 'How broadly are you asserting the right of the United States to target an American citizen? Where is the limit to this?'

"She provided her own answer: 'The limit is the courthouse door' . . . .

'Mr. Hauck acknowledged that Americans targeted overseas do have rights, but he said they could not be enforced in court either before or after the Americans were killed.'"

Re-read that last line, as it's the Obama administration in a nutshell: of course you have those pretty rights, dear citizens. It's just that nobody can enforce them or do anything to us when we violate them. But you do have them, and they're really, really important, and we do value them so very highly, and President Obama will deliver another really majestic speech soon in front of the Constitution about how cherished and valued they are.

MUCH MORE of the ARTICLE AT:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/20/press-freedoms-manning-risen

[PDJane]

1. Disgusting. One more outrage in the name of secrecy and the common narrative.

[Cleita]

2. And people wonder why we hope Snowden will be able to

get someplace that will grant him protection from our justice system.

[dgibby]

3. Judge, Jury, and Executioner.

How quaint. And to think, that's the lesser of the two evils. I have no hope for this country anymore.

[malokvale77]

4. Damned sad (nt)

[dgauss]

5. Some Catch-22 logic there.

You have constitutional rights as long as you don't do anything where you need them. If you're in a situation where you really need them then you can't use them. So you have them, as long as you don't really, really need them.