Shocker: Secret FISA court judges don't want watchdogs spying on their secret courts

If you're a judge in charge of a secret court that issues secret rulings determining who will be the target of secret NSA spy programs, the last thing you want is someone looking over your shoulder. For you, this whole Snowden thing has been a royal pain in the keister. If you had your way, things would just go back to the way they were. Then, you could simply keep running things without any of the pesky "transparency" that was promised by Barack Obama.

Sadly, the heat's on. Americans from every point on the political spectrum are becoming less and less trusting of your courts. The secrecy that you so love has put just about everyone - from Michael Moore to Glenn Beck - on the same page. For whatever reason, folks just aren't thrilled with the notion of a surveillance state.

Now, a movement is afoot to rein you in, and you don't like it one bit. From the Los Angeles Times:

Judges on the federal government's secret surveillance court have strongly rejected any proposed changes to their review process, putting unexpected pressure on the White House on Tuesday as President Obama prepares a speech aimed at bolstering public confidence in how the government collects intelligence. In a blunt letter to the House and Senate intelligence and judiciary committees, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates made it clear that the 11 judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court are united in opposition to key recommendations by a presidential task force last month aimed at increasing transparency and judicial oversight, including at least one that Obama has tentatively endorsed.

So what, exactly, has the judges' robes in a bunch? Is President Obama going to force them to operate in the open? Is he going to make them answerable to a Congress full of wide-eyed Libertarians? Is he going to run transcripts of their rulings up on the Times Square jumbotron?

Of course not. The President likes secrets too. All he allegedly wants to do is place a privacy advocate in the court's hearings.

"Most surprisingly, Bates said the judges opposed adding an independent advocate for privacy and civil liberties to the court's classified hearings, saying the proposal was "unnecessary — and could prove counterproductive." "The participation of an advocate would neither create a truly adversarial process nor constructively assist the courts in assessing the facts, as the advocate would be unable to communicate with the target or conduct an independent investigation." Adding an advocate to "run-of-the-mill FISA matters would substantially hamper the work of the courts without providing any countervailing benefit in terms of privacy protection."

In other words, according to the FISA court judges, a civil rights advocate would go way too far and not far enough. It's a fun new spin on 'trying to have it both ways.'

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a privacy rights watchdog is needed because the "work of the courts" is trampling the 4th Amendment, wouldn't "hampering their work" be the point of the job? Isn't that precisely why we would want him to be there in the first place?

Regardless, it's unsurprising that a group of judges who work in the shadows would want to keep the light from shining on their secret proceedings. What's more interesting is that they're being so vocal about it. The fact that they're carping this loudly sounds an awful lot like an indication that a new batch of restrictions is absolutely necessary.

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