4 Ways the Government Keeps You In the Dark About What It's Doing

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/4-ways-government-keeps-you-dark-about-what-its-doing



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1. Hiding Judicial Rulings: A great deal of the surveillance conducted in the name of national security is conducted through the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established by the Foreign Intelligence Services Act (which was first passed in 1979 and was updated in 2008). FISA allows conversations allegedly involving at least one person in a foreign country to be monitored without the usual requirement to establish probable cause.

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2. Fourth Amendment Catch-22: Readers may be surprised to learn that the Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on whether the new FISA regulations are consistent with the Fourth Amendment. The reason for this is that the Obama administration and the federal judiciary have collaborated to advance a bad theory that prevents such cases from being heard.


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3. Abuse of Classification Powers: Further undermining public accountability is the increasing number of government documents that are classified and hence shielded from public view. The state does have a genuine interest in secrecy in some cases, but they should be narrow and the presumption should be in favor of transparency. Instead, large numbers of documents are classified without any plausible security rationale. More than 95 million documents were classified last year (as opposed to 11 million in 2000) and the Manning and Snowden leaks have made clear that large numbers of these never should have been.

4. FOIA Foot-Dragging: In addition to the abuse of classification, government agencies have also been slow to release the public information as required by law. Last year, an investigation found that 19 out of 20 federal agencies failed to comply with the timelines for responding to requests established by the Freedom of Information Act. A combination of a far too secretive Obama administration and the Republican mania for cutting discretionary spending have further undermined public accountability.

[dipsydoodle]

1. Its what known as Mushroom Government.

Keeps you in the dark and pours shit on you occasionally.

[newfie11]

2. A great discription

I agree!