EFF Wins National Security Letter Transparency Lawsuit

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/05/victory-eff-wins-national-security-letter-transparency-lawsuit

by Elof • 7 years ago

189 29 7 years ago

mjevans3• 7 years ago

Every law, and every sealed procedure, should have a (relatively) short sunset clause built in. Before that clause triggers it should be reviewed and extended if necessary.

In the case of NSLs, the proper legal way to do this would be to have a new judge review the need for continued secrecy every couple years.

Nerdfest• 7 years ago

Great idea, but a much shorter time-frame would be in order, especially for something that really is unconstitutional.

hirundo• 7 years ago

Every law, and every sealed procedure, should have a (relatively) short sunset clause built in.

Including the law that implements that policy? Including the Bill of Rights? A law prohibiting murder?

sieabahlpark• 7 years ago

Gotta make sure we allow the next Congress to remove 99% of the laws protecting the citizens and declare the speaker the new ruler of the USA. Duh.

These laws sounds nice but in practice shouldn't be blanket applied to everything, you've very easily pointed out why.

mjevans3• 7 years ago

The sunset clause for the constitution and amendments should probably be on the order of decades; those aren't individual actions but wide ranging codes, with a VERY HIGH BARRIER of entry (and they should have just as high a bar to clear for maintenance). They should still be reviewed, curated and maintained over time to keep them matched to contemporary language. The changes in language would also allow for re-review of case law and other methods of defining what laws mean. That would also be a strong reason for maintaining the language as is if it currently works.

(edit)

Also, like DHCP leases, for such important items you'd want multiple review chances. E.G. If it's a 100 year expiration, review at 30 left, 15 left, 10 and 5+ left possible to review at any time.

Sir_Substance3• 7 years ago

A law prohibiting murder?

Seems like the kind of thing that should have no trouble getting rubber-stamped every few years.

Lets invert that though.

In 1615 Iceland passed a law stating that any Basque that set foot in the Westfjords /must/ be killed. They got around to abolishing it in 2015.

Seems like the sort of thing that probably should have been revoked earlier, no?

More generally, most countries legal codes are a god damn shitshow of strata so dense it takes years to decades of study to understand them even a little.

As a result, rulings are arbitrary and hard to predict, citizens are uninformed on the law and can be blindsided by vindictive police, new laws are disproportionately hard to create due to conflict resolution with old laws being required and parliaments enshrine old laws in tradition and are lothe to amend them.

In general, it's the legal equivalent of that codebase that no one is willing to change because no one remembers why things were implemented in the first place.

Lets not pretend that adding expiry clauses to existing or new laws would lead to a world where murder is legal. That'll get tracked pretty closely and refreshed on the regular. I would expect two outcomes:

1. A government department is created specifically for the purpose of tracking and ranking upcoming law expiries by importance. We should probably have something like this already.

2. For the things society holds really dear, murder/rape/assault, taxes, driving laws etc, I would expect to see a regular "refresh the core issues" session at the start of every year. Essentially a formality where the government can go "yep, torture is still bad, moving on".

However, I'd expect most of the random statutes against oral sex that are still all across the US to expire pretty quickly with lawmakers by and large not giving enough of a shit to refresh them, and that's /good/. Those laws serve no meaningful purpose, their only use is as a weapon for corrupt police to threaten average citizens with.

int_19h2• 7 years ago

A more scalable approach would be to tie the sunset date to the number of votes the bill receives when it becomes law.

So, if something receives an unanimous vote in favor, maybe it shouldn't have a limited term at all. Something that has a 3/4 supermajority in favor can probably last for a few decades without review. Something that barely squeaks by with 50%+1 should be considered a crutch, to review at the earliest opportunity (i.e. sunset shortly after the next election date).

Furthermore, any new vote on a repeal of an existing law should override earlier counts. So something that was originally passed unanimously only doesn't sunset for as long as nobody tries to repeal it. If there's a repeal vote, even if that fails, the new vote percentage establishes the sunset.

This would have some very interesting effects on legislatures, especially those dominated by two or three parties. The dominant party would have to balance between passing uncompromising laws that sunset very quickly, versus compromise that might amass a supermajority sufficient to close the issue for a long time.

mindslight• 7 years ago

If we had the power to require that, then wouldn't we also have the power to just not pass knee-jerk totalitarian legislation in the first place?

Of course by knee-jerk I'm only referring to the presentation. We know these things get drafted ahead of time, then sit around waiting for the right opportune tragedy to push them through.

somebodythere• 7 years ago

I remember reading somewhere an idea about splitting the legislature into one chamber which solely creates laws, and another which solely sunsets them.

I don't know enough about civics to say if that is a good idea or not, but I certainly found it interesting.

TallGuyShort2• 7 years ago

If you're interested in stuff like that, might want to Google some of the news about Idaho's "regulatory reset". I think I have a relatively extreme opinion about how minimalist our laws and government should be and even I'm nervous about how it's going to go, but it will be interesting and I hope it goes well.

int_19h2• 7 years ago

Heinlein actively promoted this idea, although I doubt that it originated with him.

dmm10• 7 years ago

I would prefer a sunsetting scheme along the lines of tenuring objects in generation scavenging garbage collection. In essence newly created laws would be up for review after a short period of time at which point they are either trashed or batched into a group with a longer time until next review. Long lived laws (ex. don't murder people) which have passed many reviews would be tenured into a pool of rare or only forced review.

Along with this approach I would want a new mechanism for batching several individual single topic bills for collective passing on a single vote. That as opposed to the current U.S. model of bundling wholly unrelated legislation into a single bill for voting on.

blotter_paper• 7 years ago

I suggest we can only have 640 kilobytes of law before a garbage collection event.

Pyxl101• 7 years ago

Make it the FBI's responsibility. Every NSL has an automatic termination date of at most 10 years in the future. If they require ongoing secrecy past that date, a court order is required. Any party in receipt of an NSL can thereby publish the NSL once that date has passed, unless they receive a court order to maintain secrecy.

ezoe• 7 years ago

That is what I don't get it about US law system.

The court orders shall not be secret.

You think the gag orders are natural because you live in one of rare countries whose law system permit the gag orders. Most countries don't.

jonahhorowitz• 7 years ago

There's an antipattern here to guard against. There are a bunch of tax breaks that turn into an eternal funding source from donor companies. "It would be a shame if we let anything happen to your tax break."

mLuby2• 7 years ago

If a thing requires an eternal gag order, maybe we shouldn't be doing that thing.

Kudos to EFF for casting light on the shadows.

throw2016• 7 years ago

Rule of law, democracy, free speech and dissent are at odds with secret courts, secret processes and secret orders. A democracy is about transparency and accountability which cannot happen in secret.

A democracy loses meaning with these kinds of laws, and the freedom act is a classic example of Orwellian doublespeak.

There are obviously many people who care deeply about democracy but given how long these activities have gone on and get passed without strong public push back betrays a serious lack of organization in the public sphere. Unless a million people are on the roads this won't stop.

mleonhard• 7 years ago

If you're happy about this, then please http://eff.org/donate :)

EFF Wins National Security Letter Transparency Lawsuit

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