It's my understanding that the secret court ruled the primary legal justification for PRISM (FISA Section 702) as unconstitutional. The Justice Department is trying to keep that ruling as secret as possible. [1] So, really, what would they do?
How can they rule the justification as unconstitutiona when the judges were giving court orders under that justification?
More broadly though, I don't understand how you can possibly have secret courts. Justice not only must be done but must be seen to be done, otherwise its not justice.
They are about masking injustice behind the veil of "law".
Since US is a country with long tradition of rule of law. The easiest way of subverting the rule of law is by subverting the concept of a judge and of a court.
I'm not a lawyer, but I believe they declared only part of FISA unconstitutional. The part they declared unconstitutional happens to be the primary crux of the legal argument for PRISM.
I don't understand how you can have secret courts either. It's a perversion of what this country was founded upon.
The existence of the court itself is not secret, the proceedings are. But they could issue a fine or jail sentence without leaking the rest of the proceedings themselves, if I understand the legal process right.
Edit: Way to mind-meld on the comments, team. Holy crap.
Your edit just reminds me of all of the people screaming that all of the companies wrote their stories using a "template" because each press release they put out sounded similar and used similar words. Heh...
