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Human Rights Watch Sues DEA Over Bulk Collection of Americans’ Telephone Records

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Re: Human Rights Watch Sues DEA Over Bulk Collection of Americans’ Telephone Records

#11

Post by sitkack »

coldcode wrote: post #5
somemirth wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if this is a naive question, but what is a "no standing argument"?

The legal theory (or practice) that you have to prove you have been personally hurt in order to sue the government. Often the government claims that if you cannot prove you have been personally affected you can't sue, and then uses secrecy laws to ensure you can't prove you have been hurt.

If I were the government, I'd go a step further and throw anyone that could prove they had been harmed in prison for acquiring state secrets. Should make the law suits drop to zero.

Re: Human Rights Watch Sues DEA Over Bulk Collection of Americans’ Telephone Records

#13

Post by happyscrappy »

jsnathan wrote: post #7
evgen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also used to prevent random serial litigants from clogging up the court system with BS cases. Requiring the plaintiff to show that they have actually suffered harm is not a difficult bar to cross in most cases and the benefits this requirement brings to the legal system as a whole outweigh its inconvenience in cases like this.

Not to say that this is not a useful standard, but I do think we are beyond "inconvenience" here. Following the current trajectory, surveillance is only going to grow as technology makes it easier and easier to gather more and more information without being noticed.

For all the handwringing about call records I can't help but think that the NSA has quite a few technologies that would make peoples heads spin. God knows what they have in skunk works.

Re: Human Rights Watch Sues DEA Over Bulk Collection of Americans’ Telephone Records

#17

Post by wavefunction »

sitkack wrote: post #11
coldcode wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal theory (or practice) that you have to prove you have been personally hurt in order to sue the government. Often the government claims that if you cannot prove you have been personally affected you can't sue, and then uses secrecy laws to ensure you can't prove you have been hurt.

If I were the government, I'd go a step further and throw anyone that could prove they had been harmed in prison for acquiring state secrets. Should make the law suits drop to zero.

All that free time, all those prison legal libraries, and now a completely unjust prison term? I know how I'd be spending my time in the clink and it wouldn't be brewing pruno...

Re: Human Rights Watch Sues DEA Over Bulk Collection of Americans’ Telephone Records

#19

Post by dguaraglia »

tsotha wrote: post #18
dguaraglia wrote: post #12

Why the DEA and not the NSA? I wonder if there's any political motivation about it.

It's going to be a lot harder for the DEA to assert some sort of national security privilege.

This is actually a good point. Then it'd be easier to leverage a potential positive outcome from this case to put a fire under the NSA and other agencies doing this. I like it.
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