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Published Letters: 43
Glenn Greenwald performs a great service in exposing FISA abuses and lobbyists abuse of the political system. But Glenn makes two assumptions with which I disagree. The first assumption is that we shouldn’t strenuously object to the existence of a secret court in the bowels of the Justice Department, whose proceedings are not only closed to the public but are completely ex parte (only the government’s side is heard). The last time I looked, the Sixth Amendment guaranteed a public trial for all, and the Supreme Court has interpreted it to include pretrial proceedings in criminal cases. It is abhorrent to a free society to permit courts to act in secret and never be held accountable to the public or to the parties whose rights are being violated. The second assumption Glenn makes is that we shouldn’t object to the United States intercepting communications of non-citizens outside the United States. Whether or not it is legal to do so in our country, there is no question that we are violating the laws of any country in which those conversations are being intercepted. Foreign intercepts should be limited to areas of clear national security- like an impending Al Qaida attack.
