wow. this week’s
“this american life”
is an amazing treatment of secrecy and the us government:
“Most people don’t know there’s a secret court in the
United States. Perhaps even more surprising, it’s been around for
over two decades. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court
authorizes wiretaps on people the FBI and other intelligence
agencies suspect of being spies. It meets in secret, and all its
proceedings are sealed. Recently, a big battle you probably heard
nothing about broke out between the court and the Ashcroft Justice
Department. For what may have been the first time in its history,
the court turned down a department surveillance application, and
for what is certainly the first time in history, the department
fought the court’s decision. The document you see above, (note the
filing number 02-001) is the first public document ever produced by
the The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, the
super-secret body convened to solve this super-secret dispute. This
and other stories about government secrecy from what many people
call the most secretive Presidential administration in
history.”