U.S. Perverting the Justice System

What the government is doing to our justice system in fighting the suits seeking to expose the NSA spying programs is frightening. This article in today's NY Times describes the Kafkesque procedures the government is forcing the judges to adopt.

The Bush administration has employed extraordinary secrecy in defending the National Security Agency’s highly classified domestic surveillance program from civil lawsuits. Plaintiffs and judges’ clerks cannot see its secret filings. Judges have to make appointments to review them and are not allowed to keep copies.

Judges have even been instructed to use computers provided by the Justice Department to compose their decisions.

But now the procedures have started to meet resistance. At a private meeting with the lawyers in one of the cases this month, the judges who will hear the first appeal next week expressed uneasiness about the procedures, said a lawyer who attended, Ann Beeson of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Lawyers suing the government and some legal scholars say the procedures threaten the separation of powers, the adversary system and the lawyer-client privilege.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn that the NSA is using the government computers they're forcing the judges to use as a device to spy on the judges themselves as well as on the plaintiffs. The whole basis for the justice system disappears when one party to a suit claims it has the right to see everything both the judge and the opposing party are doing before they do it.