[ENCOSEARRALIA]

NYTimes Sues The Federal Government For Refusing To Reveal Its Secret Interpretation Of The PATRIOT Act


from the secret-laws-and-secret-interpretations dept

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. Here's hoping the court systems don't let them. No matter what you think of this administration (or the last one) and how it's handling the threat of terrorism, I'm curious how anyone can make the argument that the US government should not reveal how it interprets the very laws under which it's required to operate.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...riot-act.shtml

[Xutrsavf]

Hahaha what..........ignorance of the law is no excuse.............so they tell us ..... in this case its secret but if you break it ,look out...........

[dXI9XFOA]

I guess a suit is exactly what should happen. The executive branch of the government doesn't interpret the law, so a lawsuit will kick it over to the judicial branch.....where, hopefully, they will tear them a new one.

But the important lawsuit would be suing for the killing of the American. This lawsuit is just trying to get their internal memos - its not challenging what happened or the content of the memos.

[Dwnijzhd]

ignorance of the law is no excuse

The subject of ignorance is much deeper than that. Look it up here:

http://www.constitution.org/bouv/bouvier_i.htm
Ignorance and error, are of several kinds. 1. When considered as to their object, they are of law and of fact. 2. When examined as to their origin, they are voluntary or involuntary, 3. When viewed with regard to their influence on the affairs of men, they are essential or non-essential. 1. Ignorance of law, consists in the want of knowledge of those laws which it is our duty to understand, and which every man is presumed to know. Consider:

Where have you ESTABLISHED a duty to understand?
What laws are every man presumed to know?

I cannot conceive of how this simple concept has been distorted to accomodate humans. It is for man after all not "color of man".