Shadow Court Secretly Enabled U.S. Surveillance State

Ironically, the FISA court was created to ensure that judicial oversight would prevent the government's illegal activities but in modern America the judiciary on the FISC has been used to illegally create a police/surveillance state aided by the "oversight" of a primarily corrupt U.S. Congress -- which is owned by America's financial oligarchy -- that has helped destroy America's freedoms, rights, and civil liberties. America's pusillanimous press corps makes no mention of the government's crimes, it only tries to eviscerate the whistle blowers and the journalists that revealed them which has made it necessary for U.S. citizens to stand up and defend the Bill of Rights and the Democracy they purportedly represent. An informed citizenry is a threat to illegitimate government.
 
America's surveillance court, in more than a dozen classified rulings, reportedly created a secret body of law that has egregiously given the NSA the power to secretly collect mountains of data on alleged American terrorism supporters, people involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage -- with the exception of the NSA and its cadre of crooked cohorts -- and cyber-attacks, with virtually no public involvement, knowledge or scrutiny. The 11-member court has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court that issues orders involving particular types of surveillance and targets with no oversight whatsoever (link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/in-secret-court-vastly-broadens-powers-of-nsa.html).
 
The FISC has broadly and secretly expanded the NSA's illegal surveillance state while claiming that the NSA's surveillance does not run afoul of the fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The classified legal rulings by the secretive court interprets law used to justify airport screenings and drunk driving check points and applies it much more broadly in secret to justify the passive collection of America's data and the government's illegal activities. If the FISC's activities and interpretations were actually legal, they would not be conducted in secret. The court can't release information because everyone will know how rogue the U.S. government has become (link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/16-4) and how illegal its actions really are. It would also become common knowledge that fabricating terrorism does absolutely nothing to "keep us safe" despite Washington’s duplicitous lies.
 
THE FISC ONLY HEARS THE GOVERNMENT’S SIDE OF THE CASE
 
With the government's history of fabricating lies and evidence to use against those that oppose their illegal activities, we should be very concerned about the surveillance court rubber-stamping everything the NSA requests. Unlike every other court in the U.S. the FISC only hears one side of the case from the government and its findings are rarely if ever made public. Given the fact that all 11 members of the secret court were appointed by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. (link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/05/did-you-know-john-roberts-is-also-chief-justice-of-the-nsas-surveillance-state/) – who was appointed by George W. Bush, one of the most corrupt Presidents in U.S. history, and who is beholden to the large corporations running Washington's culture of corruption – Americans need to be even more concerned about how this court operates and the illegal actions they are enabling.
 
In one of their most important rulings the FISC has reportedly expanded a legal principle known as the "special needs" doctrine -- created in 1989 by the U.S. Supreme Court in a ruling that allowed drug testing of railway workers, finding that a minimal intrusion on privacy was justified by the government's need to “keep us safe” -- and further eroded the Fourth Amendment requirement of a warrant for searches and seizures to use in terrorism cases (link: http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/secret-fisa-court-widens-power-nsa-sp).
 
In the mid-2000s the FISC began interpreting the word "relevant" quite broadly to allow the NSA to spy on Americans. The illegally implemented "PATRIOT Act" allows the FBI to collect "tangible things" and "records" from businesses if they are "relevant to an authorized investigation" of foreign intelligence activities. Because the disingenuous claim that investigations into "National Security" threats are different than regular criminal investigations, the precedents on privacy issues are much broader than those established by the U.S. Supreme Court (link: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/fisa-courts-relevant-redefinition-challenged.html). Because no one can challenge the FISC, many privacy groups are going directly to the Supreme Court to challenge the illegal spying authorized by the FISC (link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/07/16-9).
 
SECRET GOVERNMENT AND SHADOW COURTS ARE DANGEROUS
 
The 11 member court gets upset when people claim they are rubber-stamping the NSA's illegal activities -- of the 33,949 requests filed with the government (that we know about) since the FISC was established in 1978, only 11 have been denied -- but it is not clear if the Internet and phone companies that are turning all your confidential information over to the NSA even have to appear before the FISC. While one member of the FISC claims he recognizes the "potential benefit of better informing the public" about the court's decisions (PDF - link: http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/fisc-032713.pdf) he claims there are "serious obstacles" to doing so due to the potential for misunderstanding caused by omitting classified details (link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/in-secret-court-vastly-broadens-powers-of-nsa.html).
 
The scope of the NSA's secretly enabled illegal surveillance goes way beyond what has been revealed so far (link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35577.htm). Having a secret government and a shadowy court (link: http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/78434.html) that egregiously creates secret laws does not keep us safe (link: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/07/08/pers-j08.html). It actually puts us in more danger. Sadly, it appears that President Obama has expanded on his predecessor's illegal police/surveillance state implemented after the "terrorist" attacks of 9/11. Unsurprisingly it appears that the revelation of the FISC’s duplicitous actions by the New York Times, which is always one to cheerlead for Washington’s culture of corruption, may be an attempt to counteract the more damaging revelations from whistle blower Edward Snowden that are yet to come.
 
Not one U.S. government official has been held accountable for their crimes since the appointment of George W. Bush to the presidency in 2000. Surveillance State America targets U.S. citizens regularly. It's time to change that. Why not use it to bust the real criminals like Wall Street fraudsters, felonious bankers and those they own in Washington (link: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/07/why-doesnt-the-government-use-its-mass-surveillance-to-bust-bank-crimes.html)? When you have a shady court making secret, illegal rulings, you don't have rule of law or Democracy. You have a shadow government led by a U.S. Executive Branch that is a Clear and Present Danger to every U.S. citizen (link: http://www.alternet.org/investigations/why-us-executive-branch-clear-and-present-danger-our-democracy). It's up to us to do something about it (link: http://www.alternet.org/activism/rule-law-missing-action-america-its-us-bring-it-back).