U.S. Government Refuses FOIA Request to Turn Over ‘Secret’ Interpretation of Patriot Act
October 17th, 2011Via: TechDirt:
We’ve been covering for a while now how Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have been very concerned over the secret interpretation the feds have of one piece of the PATRIOT Act. They’ve been trying to pressure the government into publicly explaining how they interpret the law, because they believe that it directly contrasts how most of the public (and many elected officials) believe the feds are interpreting the law. While the two Senators continue to put pressure on the feds and to hint at the feds’ interpretation, just the fact that the government won’t even explain its own interpretation of the law seems ridiculous.
Given all of this, reporter Charlie Savage of the NY Times filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out the federal government’s interpretation of its own law… and had it refused. According to the federal government, its own interpretation of the law is classified. What sort of democracy are we living in when the government can refuse to even say how it’s interpreting its own law? That’s not democracy at all.
Julian Sanchez points us to the news that Savage and the NY Times have now sued the federal government for not revealing its interpretation of the PATRIOT Act, pointing out that if parts of the interpretation contain classified material, the Justice Department should black that out and reveal the rest, but simply refusing to reveal the interpretation entirely is a violation of the Freedom of Information Act. You can bet that the feds will do everything they can to get out of this lawsuit, just as they did with the various lawsuits concerning warrantless wiretapping.
Related:
U.S. Runs Surveillance Operations Based on Secret Interpretations of Patriot Act
The Secret Patriot Act Is Staying Secret
Research Credit: alvinroast
What we have to face as Americans is that every single word we write or speak, and soon everything we think, is monitored and interpreted by our government “of the People” and they will use them against us if they can
the govt’s interpretation is so bad that they think it is better to blatantly and illegally conceal it than to publicly declare it… ?
these lawsuits are a joke (as if the justice department doesn’t have a conflict of interest here). even if some public version comes out of this, it will be a dummy copy meant only for show.
[something about bread and circuses]