We seem to have as many ‘courts’ as we have individual these days…..there is a new one operating within the Biden admin structure…..the Data Protection Review Court….
At an undetermined date, in an undisclosed location, the Biden administration began operating a secretive new court to protect Europeans’ privacy rights under U.S. law.
Officially known as the Data Protection Review Court, it was authorized in an October 2022 executive order to fix a collision of European and American law that had been blocking the lucrative flow of consumer data between American and European companies for three years.
The court’s eight judges were named last November, including former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Its existence has allowed companies to resume the lucrative transatlantic data trade with the blessing of EU officials.
The details get blurry after that.
The court’s location is a secret, and the Department of Justice will not say if it has taken a case yet, or when it will. Though the court has a clear mandate — ensuring Europeans their privacy rights under U.S. law — its decisions will also be kept a secret, from both the EU residents petitioning the court and the federal agencies tasked with following the law. Plaintiffs are not allowed to appear in person and are represented by a special advocate, appointed by the U.S. attorney general.
And critics worry it will tie the hands of U.S. intelligence agencies with an unusual power: It can make binding decisions on surveillance practices with federal agencies, which won’t be able to challenge those decisions.
“Until there’s some clarity on how that’s going to operate, I think you could expect the intelligence community to be nervous about what it might mean, especially since it’s not even clear what its caseload is going to look like,” said Matthew Waxman, a State Department and National Security Council veteran and chair of the national security law program at Columbia University.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/17/inside-bidens-secret-surveillance-court-00136175
We already have a plethora of ‘secret’ courts….do we really need another?
Just wondering.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
People who insist there is a shadow government or deep state are usually ridiculed as silly MAGA conspiracy theories but now we have a secretive government decider created solely by executive order. The irony is they are doing the “secret stuff” without any public oversight or review and are so dismissive of “we the people” they have the audacity to perform actions with no fear of scrutiny. Now the secret state government is “in your face secret” and indicative of democrat government trends. Yet they terrorize the public with assertions that Trump will impose a dictatorship. The democrats are already evolving toward dictatorship “inch by inch” operating from “in the shadows”.
I have very little nice to say about Dems….but inching toward dictatorship….we see that very differently. chuq
The very idea of secret courts is worrying. Why do they need to be secret regarding data protection? My guess is because they are not actually protecting the data, but collecting it for use by the Secret Service/NSA/CIA.
Best wishes, Pete.
I think you are on to something Pete…..chuq