Officially known as the Data Protection Review Court, its creation was authorized in an October 2022 executive order. This court, composed of eight judges handpicked by the Biden administration, has allowed companies to continue the transatlantic data trade, now with the blessing of officials in the European Union. (Related: The White House goes rogue: Secret surveillance program breaks all the laws.)
In other words, the surveillance court was created to resume the trade of consumer data between American and European corporations.
For context, intelligence agencies can legally surveil the private data of European citizens held by companies in the United States. Europeans have no recourse under American law if agencies overreach, unlike Americans whose data is held in Europe.
The court's mandate, according to the Department of Justice, is to ensure that Europeans now have a way to have their privacy rights upheld under American law.
Biden's new secret surveillance court does not let plaintiffs appear in person
But the court's decisions will be kept secret from both the EU residents petitioning the court and federal agencies tasked with protecting privacy law. Plaintiffs are also not allowed to appear in person and can only be represented by special advocates appointed by the attorney general.
While all this is public knowledge, information regarding the court's other activities are difficult to obtain. Where the court meets is a secret, creating a situation wherein people who want to file cases against Big Tech regarding their data would not be able to appear in court and would not even know the results of their case.
"They go through some sort of case, and then they don't get to know the result of the case," commented Glenn Beck on the Jan. 18 episode of his BlazeTV program. "Not only that, plaintiffs are also not allowed to appear in person or their representatives. How could they? They don't know where it is."
Critics warn that such a situation provides more power than necessary for U.S. intelligence services, who can now make binding decisions on surveillance and data acquisition practices of federal agencies without being challenged.
"Until there's some clarity on how [the court is] going to operate, I think you could expect the intelligence community to be nervous about what it might mean, especially since it's not even clear what its caseload is going to look like," said Matthew Waxman, a former member of the State Department and the National Security Council and chair of the national security law program at Columbia University.
Privacy activists further warn that, of the eight judges named by Attorney General Merrick Garland back in November 2023, four of them have deep-rooted experience with handling classified information from their previous careers in the Justice Department and the National Security Agency. The government claims their past allows them to be "independent decision-makers" without bias toward the government's surveillance program.
Follow Surveillance.news for more news about Americans being surveilled by the federal government.
Watch the video below to learn more about Glenn Beck's commentary on the Biden administration's new secret surveillance court.
This video is from the High Hopes channel on Brighteon.com.
More related stories:
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MILLIONS of Americans being surveilled through secret cellphone program, are you compromised?
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