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Comment by Moral_ | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone turn this lawyer speak into something the layman tech person can understand, please?

They will release a redacted version of the opinion in question, and a redacted version of exactly one paragraph from a classified whitepaper given to congress on it. In both cases, how redacted they will be is up in the air.

They requested an extension until August 21st to do this (original deadline was August 12th). The EFF "reluctantly did not oppose this"

> They requested an extension until August 21st to do this (original deadline was August 12th).

I don't get it; how long could it possibly take to redact such documents? Is there somebody toiling 8 hours a day for 7 or 8 more days, scrambling to get this done in time? Or are they lazily just sticking it on the backburner of some intern?

There's probably some fighting going on about what exactly should be redacted or preserved.

Hmm, that makes sense.

Not really knowing what sort of thing information is in court decisions, what is likely the sort of thing that will be redacted? Names of example programs/agents/terrorists I guess? I don't know if it would make sense for that sort of thing to be in the decision. Or are they likely going to redact more than just supporting information?

Much like the secret court order, with secret bits being removed, you don't really ------------ ------- ------------ - ----. And lets face it - the ----.

They're probably carefully going over the specific legal interpretation of every word, phrase, and sentence being released in order to cover their own asses legally and politically.

According to the document they've had to involve some senior people in deciding what to redact and there are only a few people in government with the expertise in the relevant issues. My guess is that the redaction involves at least two agencies (DOJ and NSA) and there's communication overhead.

It's really unfortunate that secret courts aren't unconstitutional. You would think that one should have been obvious.

the US can always pass a new amendment. (I mean, if you can persuade the legislature.)

Article III of the constitution is amazingly brief. It doesn't even explicitly create the supreme court's power to determine constitutionality.

> It's really unfortunate that secret courts aren't unconstitutional.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review aren't secret courts.

Their proceedings may be invariably be secret because of their subject matter, but the proceedings of regular federal courts may be, too. The difference is that the FISC and FISCR deal exclusively with issues that are handled in secret, but there is no principle that would prohibit them as "secret courts" that wouldn't also prohibit all sealed proceedings in the other federal courts.

"Ok. You win. Give us a few more days to redact the hell out of the opinion, and then we'll give it over to you."

Yes please, what are the implications of this release?

Hard to tell since the details have been kept secret, but the FOIA request is for any order or opinion of the court on whether any 702 minimization was done unreasonably or whether any any 702 authorities have been used to circumvent the "spirit of the" law, and also for any briefings supplied to congress.

Since we now know that there is at least one such opinion, this will at least shine some sunlight on it so we can see the extent of the "circumventions" and how strongly the court dealt with it. If anything, it may show how firmly the court pursues its oversight responsibilities.

It's not difficult language and I think what you really want to ask, without asking, is does anyone have a TLDR? At least that's what I'm asking because the PDF on my iPhone is on the fritz.

You feel it's not difficult language to non-lawyers, but you physically can't read the text because your phone is broken? How would you know?

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