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Comment by CurtMonash | Hacker News Reader

That's not crazy. When faced with a law, terrible or otherwise, judges have two main choices:

1. Rule that the law should be followed. 2. Rule that the law is unconstitutional.

The article provides strong reasons for believing the law is terrible, but that doesn't mean the judge is wrong on any grounds except constitutional ones.

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3. Rule that the plaintiff lacks standing to sue because the only evidence that the plaintiff has that they have been a target of this law is a result of whistleblowing, and if the evidence of a whistleblower, although both true and confirmed by the defendant, is accepted, this would encourage more whistleblowing, which is the worst possible outcome imaginable. Instead, the only parties who have standing are the ones who had been directly and secretly served with the order (to monitor all of the plaintiff's communications), and those parties only have standing to secretly challenge the order in a secret court.

You could rule that, too.

Well, standing is usually a matter of law. But yes, I was oversimplifying, and anyhow IANAL.

My point was that your oversimplification was deceptive. You state that the judge only has two choices, and it's a matter of record that the actual judge in question chose neither of them.

>Well, standing is usually a matter of law.

The constitutionality of the concept of standing was not in question.

I agree, if I'm reading this correctly.

From the article: "Pauley is essentially saying that the targets of the order have no recourse to challenge the collection of their personal data because Congress never intended for targets to ever know that they were subject to this sort of spying."

I don't think that's true...I think the judge is saying that the targets of the order have no recourse to challenge the collection of their personal data because there's nothing to challenge (it's legal), regardless of whether or not Congress intended for the targets to know about it.

Am I misreading it?

I read it differently. I read:

Targets of the order have no recourse to challenge the collection because they don't have legally acceptable evidence that the collection exists.

Altough, the fact that the evicende osn't acceptable isn't in your quote.

4. That a law can have an exception. For example, a friend has no front license plate on his sports car. But because a previous magistrate ruled that it was fine, all future fix-it tickets are automatically thrown out on grounds of precedent. (IANAL.)

Traffic magistrates don't usually have the power to establish precedent.

So I just asked: the first time it was an actual judge.

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