Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Utah in a letter to Attorney General Holder protesting the secrecy of the interpretations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The senators believe that the government is utilizing this section of the Patriot Act to collect intelligence in a manner completely different than how the majority of Americans, including most congressmen, believe the law authorizes. Furthermore, they claim skepticism about the actual value of this “intelligence collection operation”.

Here’s another good excerpt:

Americans expect their government to operate within the boundaries of publicly-understood law, and as voters they have a need and a right to know how the law is being interpreted, so that they can ratify or reject decisions made on their behalf. To put it another way, Americans know that their government will sometimes conduct secret operations, but they don’t think that government officials should be writing secret law.

And this:

The crux of the Justice Department’s argument for keeping the official interpretation of the law secret is that this secrecy prevents US adversaries from understanding exactly what intelligence agencies are allowed to do. We can see how it might be tempting to latch on to this chilling logic, but we would note that it would then follow that all of America’s surveillance laws should be secret, because that would make it even harder to guess how the United States government collects information…But American laws should not be made public only when government officials find it convenient. They should be public all the time, and every American should be able to find out what their government thinks those laws mean. We recognize that this obligation to be transparent with the public can be a challenge, but avoiding that challenge by developing a secret body of law is not an acceptable solution.

I like the use of “chilling logic”. Hell, even with those odious signing statements presidents have been using lately, at least the public knows where the executive branch stands.

Finally, this:

The Justice Department’s motion to dismiss these Freedom of Information Act lawsuits argues that it is the responsibility of the executive branch to determine the best way to protect the secrecy of intelligence sources and methods. While this is indeed a determination for the executive branch to make, we are concerned that the executive branch has developed a practice of bypassing traditional checks and balances and treating these determinations as dispositive in all cases. In other words, when intelligence officials argue that something should stay secret, policy makers often seem to defer to them without carefully considering the issue themselves. We have great respect for our nation’s intelligence officers, the vast majority of whom are hard-working and dedicated professionals. But intelligence officials are specialists – it is their job to determine how to collect as much information as possible, but it is not their job to balance the need for secrecy with the public’s right to know how the law is being interpreted. That responsibility rests with policy makers, and we believe that responsibility should not be delegated lightly.

(via cwj)

It’d be lovely if the Patriot Act wasn’t used to spy on and deport Latin@s or, you know, stalk people’s blogs.

(via mohandasgandhi)