One Small Step for Civil Liberties
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department is poised to announce a new policy on using claims of state secrecy to block the release of information about controversial counterterrorism strategies such as rendition and warrantless wiretapping...
Under the new approach, an agency trying to hide such information would have to convince Attorney General Eric Holder and a panel of Justice Department lawyers that its release would compromise national security.
Such claims of state secrecy previously have required a lower standard of proof that the information was dangerous, as well as the approval of fewer officials...
Although I don't agree with who gets to decide whether the release of information would compromise national security, I do think this is a step in the right direction. Requiring more 'proof 'has been needed for the past 8 years.
There should be a special commission however, perhaps previous Senators and Representatives or perhaps previous Attorney Generals, appointed for a specified amount of time, that are not currently in office, nor running for one, thereby not subject to political campaign pressures would be a better group to look at this information and decide whether it should be kept secret or not.
It's a small step but at least it's step in the right direction. Maybe a panel of federal judges might be better?
September 23, 2009 4:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
How about a panel of bloggers: we who love to mouth off could keep quiet. Honestly! ;)
Seriously, I agree with kgb999, a small step's better than nothing. I don't know about the ex-Senators/Representatives being a liaison for state secrets however. Imagine Delay injuring himself on Dancing With the Stars, being on pain killers, and mouthing off some secret or another to a tabloid. They no longer are completely beholden to serving the Constitution as they once were, IMO.
September 23, 2009 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
The ACLU has already essentially condemned it and for good reason. It's yet another fake change brought to you by the Obama administration.
September 23, 2009 11:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's a short excerpt from Glenn Greenwald on this topic that is worth reading:
"This leads to a more general point: when it comes to uprooting ("changing") the Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism and civil liberties -- the issue which generated as much opposition to the last presidency as anything else -- the Obama administration has proven rather conclusively that tiny and cosmetic adjustments are the most it is willing to do. They love announcing new policies that cast the appearance of change but which have no effect whatsoever on presidential powers. With great fanfare, they announced the closing of CIA black sites -- at a time when none was operating. They trumpeted the President's order that no interrogation tactics outside of the Army Field Manual could be used -- at a time when approval for such tactics had been withdrawn. They repudiated the most extreme elements of the Bush/Addington/Yoo "inherent power" theories -- while maintaining alternative justifications to enable the same exact policies to proceed exactly as is. They flamboyantly touted the closing of Guantanamo -- while aggressively defending the right to abduct people from around the world and then imprison them with no due process at Bagram. Their "changes" exist solely in theory -- which isn't to say that they are all irrelevant, but it is to say that they change nothing in practice: i.e., in reality.
"That's why I called yesterday's announced changes to the state secrets policy a "farce" (here's a Washington Times article today reporting on reactions, including mine). Yes, the changes they announced sound better in theory than what existed previously. It's nice that the DOJ claims it will voluntarily impose a higher burden on itself before asserting the privilege, will require the approval of the Attorney General, will avoid asserting the privilege only to avoid embarrassment over government wrongdoing, etc. But none of that would have altered the Obama administration's controversial, Bush-replicating assertions of the privilege. Not only the Attorney General, but the President himself, explicitly endorsed the specific assertions of the privilege that triggered the controversies in the first place: to block, in advance, lawsuits brought by victims of Bush's torture, rendition and illegal eavesdropping programs. This "new policy" would plainly allow the continuation of that conduct because the decision-makers now -- the DOJ -- are the same ones who asserted the privilege in the first place. So how, in practice, would this change anything?"
September 24, 2009 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink