Piercing the confusion around NSA’s phone surveillance program

Dana Priest | The Washington Post | August 9, 2013

On the third floor of the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in downtown Washington, judges assigned to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court place their palms on a biometric hand scanner mounted next to the entrance door. Then the judges and their staff enter a code into door’s electronic cipher lock.

Inside a secure vault — one impenetrable to any sort of technical eavesdropping — the judges review some of the Justice Department’s most sensitive requests for access to private communications information, including the phone records of tens of millions of Americans, a collection that has generated significant criticism since it was disclosed in June.

The court is staffed year-round, and on an emergency basis, to authorize surveillance by the U.S. intelligence community. Although much attention has been focused on the court’s approval of the NSA’s so-called metadata phone records program, interviews with intelligence officers and experts, public statements and recently declassified documents indicate that the authorization marks the beginning of a long — and, U.S. officials say, carefully regulated — process.

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Cowardly Court: Where’s Our Gay Marriage ‘Masterwork’?

Bill Boyarsky | Truthdig | April 8, 2013

In 1953, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson opposed school segregation but worried that the court, in ordering integration, would be imposing revolutionary change by “judicial fiat.” His young law clerk rejected his boss’ caution and told him, “If you are going to reach the decision … you should not write as if you were ashamed to reach it.”

The exchange showed how much both men were aware of the political, legal and emotional currents swirling around one of the most important judicial actions in American history. Their feelings are relevant today as the Supreme Court considers another matter of great historical importance, same-sex marriage.

As the Los Angeles Times’ Jim Newton relates in his superb biography “Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made,” Jackson put his worries aside, listened to clerk E. Barrett Prettyman and with pride joined in the unanimous vote for the Brown v. Board of Education decision, written by Chief Justice Warren, that banned segregated schools.

“A masterwork,” is how Jackson described Warren’s clear and powerful words: “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Suffering from a heart ailment, Jackson rose from his hospital bed so he could vote.

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