Tampering with the Courts

Think back to your school-days civics lessons... particularly, the bit about how the United States federal government is divided into three separate-but-equal branches, set up in such a way as to check and balance each other.  Now, check out this article.

The short version... the NSA claimed that one of their lawyers might have accidentally released classified information, sensitive to national security, as part of their public testimony in a lawsuit against them.  To fix this, they wanted the judge to quietly alter the court transcripts at their direction, leaving no indication that they had been tampered with.  Thankfully, the judge in question told them in effect, "not only no", then informed the plaintiffs about the NSA's request and gave them opportunity to respond.  On further review of the public transcript, the NSA decided that no classified information had been released, so forget they even asked.

So, the good news is that the system worked... this time.  The bad news is that the NSA, taken at their word, is incompetent enough to first let truly sensitive data escape into the public space, then try to close the barn door after the horse is out, and, in the process, corrupt the public record of what's going on in our courts... or, if you're not so charitably minded, they made a "request", covered in a fig-leaf of national security concerns, to put a thumb on the scales of justice, fully expecting compliance from the supposedly-separate-but-equal courts.

Me, I'm a pessimist... and the worst part is, there's no good way to know for sure, one way or the other.  Short of somebody coming out and saying "yes, I tampered with court documents at the executive branch's direction", how would we know?  Worse, the ham-fistedness of this attempt makes me wonder, is this how they do things in that secret FISA court, so that's why they expected it to work here?  Well, at any rate, kudos to Judge White for this time, and here's hoping the courts are filled with judges equally well suited to defending the judiciary.