[hga]

"If Lavabit lost its appeal to the F.I.S.C.R., and still refused to coöperate, it would run a serious risk of being found in contempt; that’s how most courts punish those who disobey its orders. The FISA court is no different. According to the court’s rules of procedure, a party may be held in contempt for defying its orders. The secret court may consider many punishments—secret fines for each day of noncompliance, or even secret jail time for executives. The idea behind civil contempt is that “you hold the key to your own cell.” If you comply, the punishment stops. But hold out long enough and your contempt may be criminal, and your compliance will not end the jail sentence or displace the fine."

Any claims the FISA court is not a real court fail hard if the above is correct. Which is pretty much has to be for the current system to work.

[barking]

Secret courts

extraordinary rendition

waterboarding

indefinite detention in a location beyond the reach of the judicial system

shoot to kill via drone

spying on the populace on a scale that the stasi could only dream of.

Spying on allies as well as enemies

What kind of a regime is that?

[akg_67]

USA -> USSR. US govt has decided to follow practices of USSR govt as it considers them to be much more superior than the former USA govt practices.

[e12e]

I believe waterboarding, unlike skateboarding, is now illegal again.

It might still be secretly legal, though.

[zooka2]

out of control

[VladRussian2]

things seem to become interesting more and more, i mean the secret fines and secret jail time. The former i guess accounted and reported to [secret department of] SEC on secret 10K forms, while later suggests the following interpretation for this new brave world of the old Russian joke: "A CEO tells to his wife that his is going on a vacation with a mistress, and he tells his mistress that he is going on a vacation with the wife, while he is going to serve secret sentence in a jail".

[dobbsbob]

Secret fines, secret proceedings, secret prison time. I wonder if the charges and evidence against you are also secret and only the court knows not the defendent.

[cabalamat]

> I wonder if the charges and evidence against you are also secret and only the court knows not the defendent.

I don't know about the USA, but the UK government recently passed a law stating exactly that.

And they want to abolish the Human Rights Act. I can't think why.

[pcrh]

I followed the citation for "secret jail time". Fortunately, at least for that allegation, it appears to be speculation in another article [1].

[1]http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...

[jteiiawer]

There were two links - http://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news-media-la...

[pcrh]

While I agree that the rights of the prisoner in the case you link to appear to be excessively curtailed , he was not "secretly imprisoned".

Secret imprisonment would be a clear indication of totalitarianism, but doesn't, as far as we know, appear to be happening on US soil.

[Eliezer]

For heaven's sake, if Guantanamo isn't a clear indicator to you, I doubt that secret imprisonment, when it comes or when it's proved to you, will be taken as a clear indicator either.

[pcrh]

The people in Guantanamo are known to be there... albeit some of them shouldn't be.

[nitrogen]

Now they're known to be there. But there were secret prisons in other countries where captives were held that were only revealed later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_prison#Official_recogni...

[Zigurd]

Paging rayiner:

You keep saying FISC "is not a real court" and is some kind of optional decoration on top of powers the executive branch already has.

So, which is it? Does FISC have judicial branch powers? Or do these penalties amount to administrative detention in judicial branch drag?

[graeme]

I don't follow. Are you arguing that the FISA court is a real court, because it shares certain characteristics with other courts?