It's hard to have that debate around secret programs authorized by secret legal opinions issued by a secret court. Actually, it's impossible to have that debate.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Despite a campaign that was based on a very powerful promise of transparency, President Obama, and again in my view quite correctly, has used the state secrets argument in a variety of courts, as much as President Bush.
We don't have an Official Secrets Act in the United States, as other countries do. Under the First Amendment, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association are more important than protecting secrets.
It is up to the government to keep the government's secrets.
Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.
It is not possible to debate the balance between privacy and security, including the rights and wrongs of intrusive powers, without also understanding the threats.
The Supreme Court must strike down the government's illegal spying program as a violation of our Fourth Amendment right to privacy.
It's increasingly clear that governments, major corporations, banks, universities and other such bodies view the defense of their secrets as a desperate matter of institutional survival, so much so that the state has gone to extraordinary lengths to punish and/or threaten to punish anyone who so much as tiptoes across the informational line.
Everything needs to be public. The legitimacy of the courts comes from the fact that they reason openly, on the record, based on facts.
Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior.
Secret government programs that pry into people's private affairs are bound up with ideas about secrecy and privacy that arose during the process by which the mysterious became secular.
No opposing quotes found.