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points by andreyf 1 day ago | 0 comments

This is a distraction from the problem, they are courts because they function as courts in providing binding precedent on how laws are interpreted. The people making the decision (FISA judges) are Article III federal judges (i.e. nominated by the President, confirmed by Senate), picked by SCOTUS Chief Justice, and continuously vetted for security clearance by exec branch. Public interest importance of their decisions are supposed to be released (for legislators to be able to preform their legislative function) within 180 days.

That is the problem -- if legislators aren't informed how the laws they wrote are interpreted / used by the executive, they cannot reason about how to legislate next.

[–] rdiddly 15 hours ago

Your point is only that the judges have been decreed to be trustworthy by various people. That's fine, and it's right to involve all three branches. But the proceedings being secret means no one has any evidence of their actual (as opposed to decreed) legitimacy. No one can reach any of the same conclusions by the same means. If a tree falls in a secret court and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

The principle upon which courts themselves are founded is basically science - An assertion is only an assertion, and doesn't become legitimate unless it 1) has evidence backing it, and 2) survives adversarial argumentation. That which is proven and can't be disproven is deemed true. Where criminal accusations are concerned, it's what distinguishes a just verdict from mere arbitrary tyranny. That is the favor being done for prosecutors by defense attorneys: giving their wins legitimacy.

But the whole proceeding is public so that the people, the actual legitimate authority in the land, have access to the same evidence and the same arguments, and can reach the same conclusion reached by their agents and representatives in the court. The verdict is just and everybody knows it.

All I'm doing is applying the same principle to the FISA court itself. If they're so trustworthy and secure, so worthy of the job of interpreting laws, it should be no problem to present evidence to that effect, by opening the proceedings. Anything that needs to be done secretly kind of needs to shed the name of "court" and become e.g. "agency" or "department."