U.S. court upholds dismissal of lawsuit against NSA on 'state secrets' grounds
Trying to litigate a matter of national intelligence through the courts is the wrong approach to use. The government has nearly unlimited powers in matters of national security, which includes the collection of intelligence. The right approach for those who believe to have standing is to write to your congressman or senator, especially if they sit on the House or the Senate Intelligence committees. Or, better, to run for office yourself. The latter advice applies to a host of other issues.If you want to save the environment, do not study environmental science. Study politics, and become a politician, at the local, state, or federal level. Gain some hard political power to make or break laws and policies.If you care about voting rights, do not become an activist. Become a politician, and marshal support for a bill.If you care about government surveillance, do not try to fix the problem through your lawyer. Become a member of Congress and marshal support for a bill.We want to have our cake and eat it. To solve the problems of society without making sacrifices. To go home at 6pm and tell the wife that you won in court against the government, have successfully nullified the government's surveillance powers, go to bed at 10, and go to work in the morning. Rather than leave your field to run for office, and possibly make a permanent career change. How many software engineers on this forum would consider becoming full time politicians for the remainder of their career and leave the tech field entirely? Few. Because as much as we like to write walls of text about the issues we pretend to be passionate about, few of us consider these problems to be little more than fictional annoyances that we don't seriously, really care about enough to make personal sacrifices to change. /rant