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You don't have to have a sound legal theory that will hold up in court. You just have to have a sound bite that you can vomit up when someone says "Wait a minut

You don't have to have a sound legal theory that will hold up in court. You just have to have a sound bite that you can vomit up when someone says "Wait a minute, isn't that blatantly illegal?"

nozzlegear 2y ago
> You don't have to have a sound legal theory that will hold up in court. What? Why? The natural continuation of "Wait a minute, isn't that blatantly illegal?" is "We're going to sue you to make you stop."
- r3trohack3r 2y ago
  At least in the context of the presidential surveillance program, the ACLU did sue to make them stop. But the program was classified which made getting evidence of the program's existence a crime. The supreme court ruled that they couldn't make a decision without evidence. Shortly after, Snowden leaked the evidence the supreme court had requested. That leak provided the ACLU the evidence necessary to bring the case back to the supreme court and win, "stopping" the program.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    So... what part of the program stopped?
    - r3trohack3r 2y ago
      It’s in air quotes for a reason. Obama ran on promises to end it and protect whistleblowers like Snowden. Then he kept it alive under new branding and doubled down on vilifying whistleblowers like Snowden.
      - throwing_away 2y ago
        Well when you say it like that, it sounds like the government is an unstoppable bureaucracy that only cares about its own expansion.
        econ 2y ago
        I'm no historian or otherwise an expert but someone told me that secret services exist almost independent from the government that spawned them and that some even continue to exist after the government is gone. (I forget the examples) The point being that it serves itself first and may act to benefit other parties. (The status quo) The government or the citizens may end up further down the list than imagined.
        eru 2y ago
        > (I forget the examples) Well, Russian / Soviet secret polices might be examples?
        throwaway48476 2y ago
        They made a whole show about this called Yes Minister
      - ljlolel 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - emptysongglass 2y ago
        One of the worst presidents the US has had in at least the last 50 years and he was held up as a champion by the left. Expanded the black sites programs, supported some of the worst foreign conflicts the US has been involved in, somehow was elected twice.
        psd1 2y ago
        [flagged]
        galangalalgol 2y ago
        Pure libertarians are no more blindly idealistic than pure anything else. Elegant solutions are attractive, perhaps especially to those working in stem. I once had someone assert to me that the standard model of physics couldn't be true, because it wasn't elegant enough. You could say that was Dunning Kruger, but while they were working in SW, their PHD was in particle physics. Reality doesn't really care what we find elegant it seems. Still that tendency is no worse than pure socialists. Perhaps it is the same tendency even. Real solutions are messy compromises. Trying to refactor an old codebase I worked on taught me that as I added back hacks for all the corner cases a second time to my new elegant design.
        psd1 2y ago
        If you want politics to be elegant, try Bhutan.
        batch12 2y ago
        To sling autism as an insult is disgusting. Maybe you can do better.
        psd1 2y ago
        Sure. Help me out by showing me how I did that.
        canadianfella 2y ago
      - lern_too_spel 2y ago
        Pure revisionism. Obama did not run on that promise, but he shut down the email metadata collection program before it was even leaked and limited and then shut down the phone metadata program after it had leaked. Snowden leaked details of compromised computer systems to China. That's not whistleblowing.
        r3trohack3r 2y ago
        I didn’t start hearing your take, including the bit about “leaking to china,” in the mainstream zeitgeist until many years later. He leaked an illegal program to the American people after the Supreme Court denied the ACLU a ruling on the classified program. His leak resulted in a successful lawsuit against the government by the American people where the judges cited Orwell in their ruling. Snowden was not the first Snowden, there are a handful of people who attempted to use official channels to blow the whistle on the program. Their careers were ruined and their lives destroyed. If Snowden had followed the official protocols to blow the whistle, we wouldn’t know his name today. He’d have lost everything for nothing and ended up working retail to make ends meet like his predecessors. These are articles from the time referencing promises made and promises broken https://www.whistleblowers.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/8.-obama-statements.pdf https://www.whistleblowers.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/8.... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/05/obama-campaign-brags-about-whistleblower-persecutions?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/05/obama-...
        lern_too_spel 2y ago
        > I didn’t start hearing your take, including the bit about “leaking to china,” in the mainstream zeitgeist until many years later. That was one of the first things he did and the whole reason he went to Hong Kong. I, along with many others, pointed it out at that time. He stupidly believed that China would grant him asylum for leaking that information. https://archive.is/i5JTB https://archive.is/i5JTB > Snowden was not the first Snowden, there are a handful of people who attempted to use official channels to blow the whistle on the program. Their careers were ruined and their lives destroyed. You're talking about the phone metadata program, the only illegal program he leaked. Point me to any information showing that lives and careers were destroyed over this. There isn't any. > He leaked an illegal program to the American people after the Supreme Court denied the ACLU a ruling on the classified program The program that the ACLU had sued over (wiretapping Americans with suspected foreign terrorist links without a warrant) had been shut down even before Obama came into office. It didn't even exist in Snowden's leaks.
- reverendsteveii 2y ago
  "We're going to sue you to make you stop" is exactly where you deploy the semilegal sound bite. You then use that as the public justification to stall, deny, countersue, delay, appeal, defend, depose and do everything you can to avoid a decision happening one way or the other until you've already gotten and done what you wanted to get and do.
  - nozzlegear 2y ago
    That strategy relies on courts always being slow and expensive though. It often feels like it, but that's not a universal truth of the court system. If the damage is high enough, courts can fast-track cases. Judges can also issue injunctions before the delays start, and if the argument is too flimsy it can backfire on the defendant. I'll concede that if whoever's being sued is going to rely on secret legal interpretations like the NSA/intelligence agencies did with the FISA court rulings, then it makes things a lot trickier.
    - reverendsteveii 2y ago
      >That strategy relies on courts always being slow and expensive though. It doesn't rely on them being slow and expensive, it forces them to be slow and expensive, or to abrogate your rights as a litigant in such a way that any decision they make will be overturned on appeal (which drags out the process even further). Courts can issue injunctions, and those injunctions can be appealed, dragging things out further. If the damage is high enough courts can fast track cases but what do you do about the 99.99% of cases where the damage isn't high enough, and who gets to decide when it is? If this doesn't work why does it keep working?
- fn-mote 2y ago
  Wasn’t this exact route taken? Government got cases dismissed for lack of standing - plaintiff could not prove they were being spied on… because the government wouldn’t reveal anything.

You don't have to have a sound legal theory that will hold up in court. You just have to have a sound bite that you can vomit up when someone says "Wait a minute, isn't that blatantly illegal?"

nozzlegear 2y ago

> You don't have to have a sound legal theory that will hold up in court. What? Why? The natural continuation of "Wait a minute, isn't that blatantly illegal?" is "We're going to sue you to make you stop."

r3trohack3r 2y ago
At least in the context of the presidential surveillance program, the ACLU did sue to make them stop. But the program was classified which made getting evidence of the program's existence a crime. The supreme court ruled that they couldn't make a decision without evidence. Shortly after, Snowden leaked the evidence the supreme court had requested. That leak provided the ACLU the evidence necessary to bring the case back to the supreme court and win, "stopping" the program.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  So... what part of the program stopped?
  - r3trohack3r 2y ago
    It’s in air quotes for a reason. Obama ran on promises to end it and protect whistleblowers like Snowden. Then he kept it alive under new branding and doubled down on vilifying whistleblowers like Snowden.
    - throwing_away 2y ago
      Well when you say it like that, it sounds like the government is an unstoppable bureaucracy that only cares about its own expansion.
      - econ 2y ago
        I'm no historian or otherwise an expert but someone told me that secret services exist almost independent from the government that spawned them and that some even continue to exist after the government is gone. (I forget the examples) The point being that it serves itself first and may act to benefit other parties. (The status quo) The government or the citizens may end up further down the list than imagined.
        eru 2y ago
        > (I forget the examples) Well, Russian / Soviet secret polices might be examples?
        throwaway48476 2y ago
        They made a whole show about this called Yes Minister
    - ljlolel 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - emptysongglass 2y ago
      One of the worst presidents the US has had in at least the last 50 years and he was held up as a champion by the left. Expanded the black sites programs, supported some of the worst foreign conflicts the US has been involved in, somehow was elected twice.
      - psd1 2y ago
        [flagged]
        galangalalgol 2y ago
        Pure libertarians are no more blindly idealistic than pure anything else. Elegant solutions are attractive, perhaps especially to those working in stem. I once had someone assert to me that the standard model of physics couldn't be true, because it wasn't elegant enough. You could say that was Dunning Kruger, but while they were working in SW, their PHD was in particle physics. Reality doesn't really care what we find elegant it seems. Still that tendency is no worse than pure socialists. Perhaps it is the same tendency even. Real solutions are messy compromises. Trying to refactor an old codebase I worked on taught me that as I added back hacks for all the corner cases a second time to my new elegant design.
        psd1 2y ago
        If you want politics to be elegant, try Bhutan.
        batch12 2y ago
        To sling autism as an insult is disgusting. Maybe you can do better.
        psd1 2y ago
        Sure. Help me out by showing me how I did that.
      - canadianfella 2y ago
    - lern_too_spel 2y ago
      Pure revisionism. Obama did not run on that promise, but he shut down the email metadata collection program before it was even leaked and limited and then shut down the phone metadata program after it had leaked. Snowden leaked details of compromised computer systems to China. That's not whistleblowing.
      - r3trohack3r 2y ago
        I didn’t start hearing your take, including the bit about “leaking to china,” in the mainstream zeitgeist until many years later. He leaked an illegal program to the American people after the Supreme Court denied the ACLU a ruling on the classified program. His leak resulted in a successful lawsuit against the government by the American people where the judges cited Orwell in their ruling. Snowden was not the first Snowden, there are a handful of people who attempted to use official channels to blow the whistle on the program. Their careers were ruined and their lives destroyed. If Snowden had followed the official protocols to blow the whistle, we wouldn’t know his name today. He’d have lost everything for nothing and ended up working retail to make ends meet like his predecessors. These are articles from the time referencing promises made and promises broken https://www.whistleblowers.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/8.-obama-statements.pdf https://www.whistleblowers.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/8.... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/05/obama-campaign-brags-about-whistleblower-persecutions?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/05/obama-...
        lern_too_spel 2y ago
        > I didn’t start hearing your take, including the bit about “leaking to china,” in the mainstream zeitgeist until many years later. That was one of the first things he did and the whole reason he went to Hong Kong. I, along with many others, pointed it out at that time. He stupidly believed that China would grant him asylum for leaking that information. https://archive.is/i5JTB https://archive.is/i5JTB > Snowden was not the first Snowden, there are a handful of people who attempted to use official channels to blow the whistle on the program. Their careers were ruined and their lives destroyed. You're talking about the phone metadata program, the only illegal program he leaked. Point me to any information showing that lives and careers were destroyed over this. There isn't any. > He leaked an illegal program to the American people after the Supreme Court denied the ACLU a ruling on the classified program The program that the ACLU had sued over (wiretapping Americans with suspected foreign terrorist links without a warrant) had been shut down even before Obama came into office. It didn't even exist in Snowden's leaks.
reverendsteveii 2y ago
"We're going to sue you to make you stop" is exactly where you deploy the semilegal sound bite. You then use that as the public justification to stall, deny, countersue, delay, appeal, defend, depose and do everything you can to avoid a decision happening one way or the other until you've already gotten and done what you wanted to get and do.
- nozzlegear 2y ago
  That strategy relies on courts always being slow and expensive though. It often feels like it, but that's not a universal truth of the court system. If the damage is high enough, courts can fast-track cases. Judges can also issue injunctions before the delays start, and if the argument is too flimsy it can backfire on the defendant. I'll concede that if whoever's being sued is going to rely on secret legal interpretations like the NSA/intelligence agencies did with the FISA court rulings, then it makes things a lot trickier.
  - reverendsteveii 2y ago
    >That strategy relies on courts always being slow and expensive though. It doesn't rely on them being slow and expensive, it forces them to be slow and expensive, or to abrogate your rights as a litigant in such a way that any decision they make will be overturned on appeal (which drags out the process even further). Courts can issue injunctions, and those injunctions can be appealed, dragging things out further. If the damage is high enough courts can fast track cases but what do you do about the 99.99% of cases where the damage isn't high enough, and who gets to decide when it is? If this doesn't work why does it keep working?
fn-mote 2y ago
Wasn’t this exact route taken? Government got cases dismissed for lack of standing - plaintiff could not prove they were being spied on… because the government wouldn’t reveal anything.