Declan McCullagh wrote:
On Thu, 11 Sep 1997, Lucky Green wrote:
secret court that has never denied a request for a wiretap) jurisdiction; Is there any way of finding out the names of the judges sitting on the FISA court?
Not that I know of, though I do know that U.S. District Court Judge Joyce Green served on the FISA court for seven years.
Background: The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Survelliance Act established a special, secret court of current Federal district court judges. They approve warrants in secret hearings, with no opposing attorneys present. The judges are required to be available 24 hours a day for emergency hearings. Some happen in the middle of the night in the judge's home.
Also, you are not likely to see a FISA judge's name on a warrant. Instead, you will see warrants by regular judges which are backdated to dates such as, say...March 28 at 9:02 a.m. There are a variety of court systems within which they have the clerks regularly 'skip' certain document numbers, leaving them with hard to trace back-dated paperwork capabilities.
This is a 'Democracy', which is why, in addition to secret police, we also have 'secret judges', and 'secret executioners'. (Do we also have 'secret voters'?)
Funny you should mention that. Check out VoteScam by James Callier (sp?). This might actually be of some interest to the security people out there. Its a pure system security issue. The software for the federal electronic vote tabulating equipment is produced by several independent vendors. *None* of the source code is available. The electronic votes are forwarded to a news consortium comprised of ABC,NBC,CBS and CNN. It does *not* go through an independently audited federal agency of any sort. (this is what Callier claims -- it should be easy enough to verify) My wife used to be an election observer in StLouis and the "validation" test consists of the operator telling the witnesses what to expect and then running a test deck of cards through the machine. *Suprise* The results are exactly as the operator predicted. The news corporations predict the outcomes. The news corporations collect the votes. The news corporations report the results. The news corporations are suprisingly close in their predictions. (very interesting) This system is so fraught with security holes I don't think I need to belabor the point. What happens when a system is vulnerable to corruption in such a sensitive position? Hint: What happens to unprotected iron in salt water? Have a better one, Jim Burnes PS: I think there is a votescam page on the web out there somewhere. Jim Burnes Engineer, Western Security, SSDS Inc jim.burnes@ssds.com ---- Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural Addr