To my knowledge, every government in the world has some sort of state secrets program. If you are against this, then that is at least consistent. But it makes no sense to say that the NSA should be releasing classified information under FOIA.
To my knowledge, every government in the world has some sort of state secrets program. If you are against this, then that is at least consistent. But it makes no sense to say that the NSA should be releasing classified information under FOIA.
Most of the specifics here are still under wraps (who's being targeted, what specific patterns they search, etc) so the programs are still in pretty good shape. It's far too early to throw in the everyone-knows-everything-already towel. What's maddening is that the leaks on Capitol Hill are exactly the same, criminally, but are usually pre-filtered, pro-US and condoned by the Administration.
Imagine if these were nuclear secrets. You would prefer it to be unclear so that replicating groups would not feel confident jumping into a nuclear project.
Obviously since we are talking about something that may violate Amendment 4, things ought to be a bit different. Probably not from a declassification standpoint, but rather from a legislate-this-out-of-existence standpoint.
So, you have an exception that says "classified material is exempt". Fair enough. But, you then turn around and call everything classified. Not fair enough.
There is virtually no limit to what can be justified if you were to follow this line of reasonng.
Do you not see a problem with this?
Perhaps a lawsuit would be able to accomplish what you suggest. I have no idea.