This seems significant:
A federal judge has ruled that Amnesty International and other human rights groups can assert the same privileges that journalists use, allowing them to better protect anonymous sources.
Unless I read it wrong, this makes it far easier to blow the whistle on, say, warrantless surveillance of American citizens by expanding the number of groups that can field a complaint without having to give up your identity. Anything that makes a government that spends so much of its time now looking over our shoulders watch its own back a little more strikes me as a good thing.
Zifnab
:p Not to be overly cynical, but I can already see the Republican front group “Citizens For Telling You The Democrats Are Worse” being formed to spread annoymous sourced materials to everyone who will stomach a Bill Kristol NYT column about how super-secret undercover agents have revealed that Valarie Plame is working for Saddam Bin Laden Van Amedinijadi the Al Gore to smuggle deadly America-killing Uronium into Iran’s nuclear weapons bunkers.
I’d be happier with stuff like this if I didn’t immediately see how it was going to be horrendously abused.
4tehlulz
It’s already been done; it’s called the Bush Administration.
RSA
Two thoughts:
First, there’s significant irony in the context in which this decision was made. It was about prison officials recording conversations between lawyers and their clients. Hmm, sometimes these kinds of things get taped, sometimes they don’t (or they do and get destroyed).
Second, I think one of the main hurdles that the warrantless surveillance cases have had to overcome is the identification of specific people who have been subject to surveillance. In this case, Amnesty knew whom they were protecting; in at least some warrantless surveillance cases, the injured parties are not known, unfortunately.
But all in all I agree that this is a good thing.
Chris
ok, I just read that a second ago, and I think this is awesome. I may have to sit here and think about this, but now this means that the executive branch can keep a plaintiff from succeeding in court against the government, but now a watchdog can prevent the government in succeeding against someone with criminal information…
so this reasonably means that if a watchdog gets a whistleblower with state secrets, then government attempts to silence will fail, because the watchdog cannot be forced to reveal the leaker (maybe). So case #1, Exec. pulls State Secrets, quashes case. Whistleblower leaks full state secrets. Case #2, Exec. demands name of leaker, anonymity granted, quashes case. Case #1 resurrected, state secrets can’t apply for common knowledge, case goes through?
Am I getting this right? Where’s Jen?
myiq2xu
G-Dub thinks “whistleblower protection” is protection from whistleblowers, not for them.
Chris
That is a damned liberal lie!
Our preznit does not think.
Stop thinking the mentally retarded are capable of willing themselves to think! It’s a liebral myth that they’re human beings.
Just like the librul myth that you need to be some sort of special human being to be presidant.
Jees ud think that the world was complicated or sumthin.
myiq2xu
Okie-dokie, change that to “believes” rather than “thinks,” but don’t misunderestimate Chimpy. He is a master of strategery.
Chris
Feh. He’s a master at begging CEOs for respect. A puppy licking the heels of the businessmen that attained the success he never did. Goes around finding favors to do for them in return for empty promises for a seat in the boardroom.
And when they go home to sail to St. Croix or drive their ‘ghinis a bit, he’ll go look for other people that might suck up to him; make him feel like he did something good with his life.
God I hope we get to put an asterisk next to his name in the books. Not even Harding put us into a war.