[largespoon]

The FBI is very goood at dissuading discourse about its more sketchy practices. Imagine a warrant that the FBI does not have to get from the a Judge, one that a recipient can not talk about publicly without risk of going to jail. Nicholas Merrill received a mandate(national security letter) saying he must give the FBI one of his clients files and never speak of the the mandate. He said in a interview, that one year an estimated 50,000 businesses received such a mandate. He was the first person to challenge them in court.

The funny thing is that in this case and another nsl case, the FBI later dropped the request, making it difficult to sue.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Uni...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=eU2wAu4qE60

[ceejayoz]

> The funny thing is that in this case and another nsl case, the FBI later dropped the request, making it difficult to sue.

This is a very frustrating aspect of our legal system - there's often not a good way to get a "sure, you stopped, but you shouldn't have done that in the first place, and you'll be in serious trouble if you try it again" sort or ruling.

[Nasrudith]

The issue is of standards and norms. People in power are held to defacto lesser standards when they should be held to more stringent ones. It isn't just those self interested in it like say judges who do coke giving a slap on the wrist to coke dealers while giving LSD dealers life sentences because they use one and counterculture uses the other but common people who buy into the "shouldn't have Xed to not be murdered".

If they were held to the same standards as even the average middle class misconduct it would be a non-issue because everyone responsible would be in jail.

The harsh truth in spite of any claimed lofty ideals power is all that matters for rights in practice. Long have people gotten into far more legal trouble for punching an obnoxious drunk than beating their kids. We can and should fight relentlessly and mercilessly against this.

[schoen]

There is a "capable of repetition evading review" standard meant to deal with this situation (to some extent).

https://duckduckgo.com/?q="capable+of+repetition+evading+rev...

[mindslight]

Or more appropriately, the standard "you violated the law, so you're going to jail".