The growing use of the state secrets privilege could threaten basic constitutional rights, according to one recent critical analysis.
If current trends in government reliance on the state secrets privilege are allowed to continue, “it is questionable whether any constitutional complaint against the government involving classified information will ever be allowed to be adjudicated,” concluded Carrie Newton Lyons in a review published last year.
Ms. Lyons, a former CIA operations officer, presented her assessment in “The State Secrets Privilege: Expanding Its Scope Through Government Misuse” (pdf), Lewis & Clark Law Review, Volume 11, No. 1, Spring 2007.
Potential reforms to the state secrets privilege will be explored by Louis Fisher of the Law Library of Congress and other experts in a January 24 panel discussion sponsored by the Constitution Project.
This is not the first time Google has agreed to censor imagery at the behest of governments, but be warned: obfuscation at this broad level poses a direct threat to the public’s ability to monitor and scrutinize government operations.
America’s affordability problem is bigger than home prices and rents. The best housing policies make it easier to build homes, and recognize how housing connects to other domains.
America’s affordability problem, for instance, is bigger than home prices and rents. How we build affects household costs like insurance and utilities.
As humans expand our geographic reach, encroach on untouched natural territories, and interact more with animal populations, we will encounter novel zoonotic diseases that threaten the human body. The sooner we act to address these risks, the better.