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points by cogman10 2 days ago | 0 comments
This is basically it.

Imagine, for example, a case is about someone disclosing the location of nuclear arms to their spouse. Maybe even accidentally. If they are brought up on charges about this, national security doesn't want the fact that a case is about nuclear weapons to be public information. They further don't want it disclosed who was told about them (as the spouse wouldn't be subject to charges). That's basically where a secret interpretation and ruling would ultimately enter. The courts can't disclose what the ruling was nor what the case was even fully about.

[–] NewJazz 2 days ago
Why can't they? They can redact names of individuals in a case like that. "Oh some person who was married to some other person who works for some agency knows where nukes might be". That's not a risk.

They could even redact larger portions of the case and still release the interpretation in some form.

[–] cogman10 2 days ago
Because it's very hard to stop accidental or incidental information leaks. For an opinion to be rendered, generally they also attach the case facts which lead to that ruling. Heavy redaction means it becomes almost impossible to use that ruling as precedent but also runs a real risk of exposing state secrets. For example, which judge made the ruling? Well if you get that you can start pulling information about the days the judge was active and a short list of the people the judge was hearing cases for.

All it takes is 1 accidental redaction or someone who did something silly like using a black highlighter on a PDF and now where the nukes are stored is public information.

There's also simply information that can be gleaned just based on the location that the hearing is taking place. This came from x court in x district, well then it's likely a nuclear silo is roughly in that county or surrounding counties.

[–] kakacik 2 days ago
Sounds like if one desperately wants some sort of excuse, this can be shoehorned to anything and everything. Exactly what 3 letter agencies would say to keep doing whatever nasty dirty unlawful and unconstitutional things they are doing on whims of current set of people in power.

Its still pretty lame and shows vast incompetence on all levels. Maybe I am a bit naive but correct solution is to tackle underlying problems, not just give up because thats what you basically suggest.

[–] NewJazz 2 days ago
These courts don't have public lists of who was being tried.

The specific location of the court, and even identity if the judge, can be redacted. We don't have to use the case as precedent.

[–] xp84 1 day ago
I’ll assume that there’s some fake district we can create in the system to attribute such things to, since normally the courts are in districts which may be too specific on their own.

But the resulting material would be like, (XXXX meaning redactions)

XXXX was accused of XXXX

Tried before judge XXXX in XXXX District court

The evidence was XXXX XXXX XXXX

The witnesses were XXXX XXXX XXXX

They were found (not) guilty

If anything could be unredacted it could potentially (?) be the bare fact that it was about nuclear secrets but you can’t really reveal anything else without giving majorly risky facts to bad actors.

The redactions of every document could require many full-time very security-cleared clerks (or take years to do if understaffed) and is of the highest importance since a single failure to redact, or operational error, may reveal the whole secret thing. Mostly, all the things need redacting, so either whole documents, or everything but the prepositions and articles is redacted.

Since it sounds like the concern here is about the public’s interest in monitoring to make sure no abuses are taking place (which is a value I do share), what part of this aim would be served by a redacted report like this?

[–] darkarmani 1 day ago
> Because it's very hard to stop accidental or incidental information leaks.

It's really hard if it is in your interest not to stop accidental information leaks, because it is easier to bulk classify everything and blame this difficulty. There is no incentive to stop accidental leaks if you can always hide everything.

[–] vincnetas 1 day ago
ok, so put a disclosure time on ruling. how how much time should pass so that information is non risk anymore? So you know that nukes locations got leaked, so what do you do? do you relocate the base? if not how sure can you be that this information is not accuired by enemies? So if you do not realocate the base you accept that this is acceptable risk. So might be that publishing the ruling is also acceptable?
[–] fluidcruft 2 days ago
A federal court tried to conceal the identity of a judge who has been reprimanded.

Claude was able to work out who it was in less than 10min based on stringing together facts that remained and seemed irrelevant. Journalists uncovered the identity independently using different means. (The ability of Claude to do this was not revealed until the other journalists had gone public and confirmed the identity.)

[–] AnthonyMouse 2 days ago
> Imagine, for example, a case is about someone disclosing the location of nuclear arms to their spouse.

The location of most US nuclear weapons are public. Moreover, if you suspect that the location of some you intend to be secret may have been compromised then the obvious sensible response is "move them" rather than "keep even the legal theory of the case a secret forever".

This is why the primary ones whose location is intended to be a secret are on submarines -- submarines are easy to move around.

[–] jancsika 2 days ago
This example requires a secret ruling but not a secret interpretation of the law.
[–] cogman10 1 day ago
Rulings are interpretations of the law.

2 parties bring up what they believe is the legal justification for their position in dispute and a judge rules on which is the correct position. If a party thinks the judge got the ruling wrong (interpreted the law wrong), they object and appeal.

[–] andreyf 1 day ago
If you look at the history of secret interpretations / rulings, they are more like "retention of communications by the government is a pre-interception act". No specifics, very broad legal definitions of what it means for everyone's communications to be retained (and in this case, probably analyzed by AI systems for risk).