More Orwellian News
Yesterday, Atrios posted a link to a Kevin Drum article at the Washington Monthly site which contained some very frightening news about 'secret' laws on the US books which were so secret that a Justice Department lawyer refused to tell the judge what that law was unless the information could be placed under seal.
After getting my jaw back up into its socket, I followed the link that Mr. Drum used as the source and went here. The case in which this issue came up involves John Gilmore, who is suing the government because he was denied entrance on an airplane because he refused to show proper identification at the airport.
The libertarian millionaire sued the Bush administration, which claims that the ID requirement is necessary for security but has refused to identify any actual regulation requiring it.
A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals seemed skeptical of the Bush administration's defense of secret laws and regulations but stopped short of suggesting that such a rule would be necessarily unconstitutional.
"How do we know there's an order?" Judge Thomas Nelson asked. "Because you said there was?"
Replied Joshua Waldman, a staff attorney for the Department of Justice: "We couldn't confirm or deny the existence of an order." Even though government regulations required his silence, Waldman said, the situation did seem a "bit peculiar."
"This is America," said James Harrison, a lawyer representing Gilmore. "We do not have secret laws. Period." Harrison stressed that Gilmore was happy to go through a metal detector.
...On the courthouse steps after the arguments, Gilmore said he felt confident about the case and welcomed a verbal concession from the Justice Department. "I was glad the government admitted it was 'peculiar' and Orwellian to make secret laws," Gilmore said.
The Justice Department has said it could identify the secret law under seal, which would be available to the 9th Circuit but not necessarily Gilmore's lawyers. But any public description would not be permitted, the department said. [Emphasis added]
In short, Mr. Gilmore was denied air passage because he refused to obey a law that was so secret that he didn't know about it and the court didn't know about it, and so secret the government's attorneys couldn't reveal its contents in open court.
Has Congress passed such secret laws? Initially I thought probably not. What is being discussed here is no doubt a regulation issued under an executive order, not that where the law came from makes any real difference. What was really troubling to me was that such a "secret" law could exist at all. Apparently it can. A helpful poster at Eschaton pointed us to yet another link which explains what probably is the basis for the secret regulation.
Thus, in a qualitatively new development in U.S. governance, Americans can now be obligated to comply with legally-binding regulations that are unknown to them, and that indeed they are forbidden to know.
A new report from the Congressional Research Service describes with welcome clarity how, by altering a few words in the Homeland Security Act, Congress "significantly broadened" the government's authority to generate "sensitive security information," including an entire system of "security directives" that are beyond public scrutiny... [Emphasis added]
Congress is in fact at fault for this incredibly frightening fact of "secret laws" because it gave the authority to the current regime to issue them. Whether intentional or unintentional, the practical result is that we are now living in a country that looks amazingly like the one envisioned in Orwell's 1984.
Now how many fingers am I holding up?
After getting my jaw back up into its socket, I followed the link that Mr. Drum used as the source and went here. The case in which this issue came up involves John Gilmore, who is suing the government because he was denied entrance on an airplane because he refused to show proper identification at the airport.
The libertarian millionaire sued the Bush administration, which claims that the ID requirement is necessary for security but has refused to identify any actual regulation requiring it.
A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals seemed skeptical of the Bush administration's defense of secret laws and regulations but stopped short of suggesting that such a rule would be necessarily unconstitutional.
"How do we know there's an order?" Judge Thomas Nelson asked. "Because you said there was?"
Replied Joshua Waldman, a staff attorney for the Department of Justice: "We couldn't confirm or deny the existence of an order." Even though government regulations required his silence, Waldman said, the situation did seem a "bit peculiar."
"This is America," said James Harrison, a lawyer representing Gilmore. "We do not have secret laws. Period." Harrison stressed that Gilmore was happy to go through a metal detector.
...On the courthouse steps after the arguments, Gilmore said he felt confident about the case and welcomed a verbal concession from the Justice Department. "I was glad the government admitted it was 'peculiar' and Orwellian to make secret laws," Gilmore said.
The Justice Department has said it could identify the secret law under seal, which would be available to the 9th Circuit but not necessarily Gilmore's lawyers. But any public description would not be permitted, the department said. [Emphasis added]
In short, Mr. Gilmore was denied air passage because he refused to obey a law that was so secret that he didn't know about it and the court didn't know about it, and so secret the government's attorneys couldn't reveal its contents in open court.
Has Congress passed such secret laws? Initially I thought probably not. What is being discussed here is no doubt a regulation issued under an executive order, not that where the law came from makes any real difference. What was really troubling to me was that such a "secret" law could exist at all. Apparently it can. A helpful poster at Eschaton pointed us to yet another link which explains what probably is the basis for the secret regulation.
Thus, in a qualitatively new development in U.S. governance, Americans can now be obligated to comply with legally-binding regulations that are unknown to them, and that indeed they are forbidden to know.
A new report from the Congressional Research Service describes with welcome clarity how, by altering a few words in the Homeland Security Act, Congress "significantly broadened" the government's authority to generate "sensitive security information," including an entire system of "security directives" that are beyond public scrutiny... [Emphasis added]
Congress is in fact at fault for this incredibly frightening fact of "secret laws" because it gave the authority to the current regime to issue them. Whether intentional or unintentional, the practical result is that we are now living in a country that looks amazingly like the one envisioned in Orwell's 1984.
Now how many fingers am I holding up?
posted by Diane at 4:12 AM
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