Ohh lookie 'state secrets'

Luis G

Luis G

<i><b>Problemator</b></i>
Staff member
The Bush administration is signaling that it plans to turn once again to a favorite legal tool known as the "state secrets" privilege to try to shut down a lawsuit brought against a Belgium banking cooperative that secretly supplied millions of private financial records to the U.S. government, court documents show.

The lawsuit against the banking consortium, which is known as Swift, threatens to disrupt the operations of a vital national security program and to reveal "highly classified information" if it is allowed to continue, the Justice Department said in several recent court filings asserting its strong interest in seeing the lawsuit dismissed. A hearing on the future of the lawsuit was scheduled for Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.

The "state secrets" privilege, allowing the government to shut down public litigation on national security grounds, was once a rarely used tool. But the Bush administration has turned to it dozens of times in terrorism-related cases in seeking to end public discussion of everything from an FBI whistle-blower's claims to the abduction of a German terrorism suspect.

...

Bush administration officials have defended the banking data program as an important tool in its war on terror, but European regulators and privacy advocates were quick to denounce the program as improper and possibly illegal, and the pressure forced Swift and U.S. officials earlier this year to agree to tighter restrictions on how the data could be used.

Two U.S. banking customers sued Swift on invasion-of-privacy grounds. Many legal and financial analysts expected that the lawsuit would be thrown out because U.S. banking privacy laws are considered much more lax than those in much of Europe. But to the surprise of many, a judge refused to throw out the lawsuit in a ruling in June.

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Is Generalissimo Francisco Franco still dead?
 
On 9/12, they asked - Why didn't we know? Today they say, you know too much.

Which is it?
 
hmmmmm yeah pre 9/11 lots of the problem was shitty infrastructure rather than a bunch of junior G man wannabes chucking gophers in their pants for some intrigue.
 
Giving up your privacy in the name of national security is a thin line.
 
yeah many here are perfectly willing to toe that line...

and grab their ankles at the same time.
 
I am aghast at the amount of liberty we've given up already. That was all along the way. Now, in teh middle of a war, we're concerneed with the state overhearing our illicit sexual trysts yet we demand the same state know who did what, when.

The day that modern man found electronic surveillace, privacy went out the door.
 
Gonz said:
I am aghast at the amount of liberty we've given up already. That was all along the way. Now, in teh middle of a war, we're concerneed with the state overhearing our illicit sexual trysts yet we demand the same state know who did what, when.
i'm sure if someone had the energy they could correlate various reductions in liberty with big events like wars, real or imaginary, which present convenient excuses... and if that is a pattern, do we wanna stick with it?
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I read something many years ago where they did look at this. The loss of liberty during wartime is dramatic (moreso than now). Eventually, all the losses were regained, eventually plus some.
 
Gonz said:
I read something many years ago where they did look at this. The loss of liberty during wartime is dramatic (moreso than now). Eventually, all the losses were regained, eventually plus some.
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Unfortunately for you, the US has been in wartime since WW2 :shrug:
 
2minkey said:
:bgtup:

yep, the iraq debacle has become pure financial stupidity.
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Had nothing to do with finances. HAd everything to do with mismanagement from Rumsfeld. Everybody is quick to point out the lessons learned in Vietnam, but nobody wants to front the money to keep it from happening again. :shrug: Congress is just as much, if not more, to blame.
 
chcr said:
"A rose by any other name..."
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To the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen...yes. To everyone else, no. An actual declaration of war transfers more than a few powers from Congress to the President. That means a draft, rationing, restraints on public gatherings, etc. None of that happened...even with the Patriot Act. The whole nation would be behind the goal of winning the war no matter the cost, and all those protesters you see on TV would be behind bars.
 
Gato_Solo said:
That means a draft, rationing, restraints on public gatherings, etc. None of that happened...even with the Patriot Act. The whole nation would be behind the goal of winning the war no matter the cost, and all those protesters you see on TV would be behind bars.
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i think a few folks around here creamed their pants just reading that.
 
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