A matter of national security...

[PhillyKev 0]

Can't believe we're bickering over who can proclaim what lies or accusations during the campaign, while the Justice department is censoring Supreme Court decisions.

The following was redacted by the Justice Department using the power vested in them by the Patriot Act.

Quote

"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."

http://www.thememoryhole.org/feds/justice_redaction.htm

[TomAiello 26]

Was the passage blacked out before it reached the court? Or just in the publicly released documents?

I'm mostly curious on outcomes. I'm pretty much outraged that they'd black that out at all.

Has anyone snopes'd (is that the correct form of the e-verb?) this one?

-- Tom Aiello

Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[EricTheRed 0]

looks like the site was redacted (I can't get there from behind my firewall)

are the black copters coming?

illegible usually

[PhillyKev 0]

>>> Anybody who has read many official documents—including those making headlines in the last year or more—has seen plenty of redactions (those portions that are blacked out or otherwise made unreadable). This, we're told, is for legitimate reasons, such as "national security" or "protecting intelligence sources and methods." But now we have absolute, incontrovertible proof that the government also censors completely innocuous material simply because they don't like it.

The Justice Department tipped its hand in its ongoing legal war with the ACLU over the Patriot Act. Because the matter is so sensitive, the Justice Dept is allowed to black out those passages in the ACLU's court filings that it feels should not be publicly released.

Ostensibly, they would use their powers of censorship only to remove material that truly could jeopardize US operations. But in reality, what did they do? They blacked out a quotation from a Supreme Court decision:

"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."

The mind reels at such a blatant abuse of power (and at the sheer chutzpah of using national security as an excuse to censor a quotation about using national security as an excuse to stifle dissent).

It's hard to imagine a more public, open document than a decision written by the Supreme Court. It is incontestably public property: widely reprinted online and on paper; poured over by generations of judges, attorneys, prosecutors, and law students; quoted for centuries to come in court cases and political essays.

Yet the Justice Department had the incomprehensible arrogance and gall to strip this quotation from a court document, as if it represented a grave threat to the republic. Luckily, the court slapped down this redaction and several others. If it hadn't, we would've been left with the impression that this was a legitimate redaction, that whatever was underneath the thick black ink was something so incredibly sensitive and damaging that it must be kept from our eyes.

Now we know the truth. Think about this the next time you see a black mark on a public document.