General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: civil war on DU [View all]MFrohike
(1,980 posts)FISA was and is a stain on the constitution. It's nothing but a thin veneer of legitimacy designed to provide the appearance of procedural safeguards with none of the substance of those safeguards. It was a terrible idea when conceived and it continues to be a terrible idea. Why? It undermines public confidence in the law and the justice system.
FISA was a poorly designed compromise meant to mollify the public after the horrors of the Church hearings. It was sold as a protection for 4th amendment rights and a means to keep the executive in check. It was a pig in a poke and everybody knew it. The purpose of it was not to actually safeguard privacy from government overreach but to make people think that. The surest sign that it was a farce the entire time is that it was an end run around an already existing venue for warrants: the federal courts. It was no different from today's attempts to skirt the courts in regard to enemy combatants.
The problem of confidence is that FISA is rightly seen as a rubber stamp. When it's headline news that a FISA request got denied, that's a pretty clear indication that this particular court is nothing but a legal nicety an administration can use to trumpet about how their actions are within the law. When you create legal process for the purpose of skirting the real process, the completely unsurprising result is cynicism. It would be better had FISA never been created and illegal surveillance, completely illegal I mean, continued. If nothing else, everyone would know the score and there would no confusion about an impotent entity that exists solely to make the national security state occasionally say please before it spies on someone. It would be far more honest as well.
As for the court decisions, don't make me laugh. The federal courts are notorious for forgetting the constitution any time somebody even whispers the phrase "national security." If you need an example, witness the fact that Quirin is still good law.