They've actually only required the Government to respond to the case. They haven't, and won't, require them to "justify their conclusion." They will only have to verify that they are claiming a national security reason, and state the category of their objection. They already sided with the Government. This is an application for re-hearing, and all they said was that the Government has to respond to that request.

Click the link, read the pdf. It is one page.

Yep. We can have plans, and when the police are abusive, that too can be handled in the Courts.

And, how could a lack of planning somehow restrain police abuse? In your example, the abusive police would not have even been privy to any national security planning involving when to invoke the legal mechanisms to cut off phone service. That is all based on national emergency.

Just because you're scared of Obama doesn't mean that emergency planning, or war planning, is somehow dangerous.

If you're paranoid about dystopian futures, why would a lack of legal planning prevent them? In your fantasy where evildoers take over the Government and ignore the law... guess what, they didn't need to have legal emergency planning. Your fantasy's very premise is that they had illegal planning that went beyond what any law allows for. See also: Treason.

The whole concept of reasonableness of searches requires the Court to balance the conflicting needs of the individual and the State. Generally the individual is protected, because it is a big invasion of the individuals privacy, balanced only against the mere convenience of the State in desiring not to get a warrant.

If National Security is invoked, the Court isn't going to muck around worrying if National Security is more important than individual privacy. That's a slam dunk for the Executive. They're also not going to attempt to second-guess the actual decision about National Security interests. All they are going to do is general analysis; did the correct person in the Executive Branch determine the national security concern; and is the claimed concern within the Government's right to manage. So if the claimed concern is something military, or involving espionage, or international terrorism, then it is pretty much guaranteed that the word of the executive weighs more heavily than the privacy of an individual or neighborhood.

You don't have to like the Constitution of the United States of America to learn how these things work. Hand-waving and libertarian propaganda won't change the fact that the role of the Court in balancing these various rights and responsibilities is also outlined in the Constitution. Don't hate or ignore what it says, while pretending to worship it and consider it absolute. If it is absolute, then bow before the role of the Court here. ;)

Because in Android development you're required to use a different paradigm that assumes the app the user is interacting with will be killed at any moment. So there is no important work being done in that process. The important work is being done in a background process that is lightweight and doesn't need to get killed when the app interface is killed.

If the phone status changing causes the app you were using to be killed (the most recent app used will actually not be killed then, but the penultimate app is likely to be) then that user interface just gets whacked. But the background process of the app won't get killed then; that only happens if the OS is truly out of resources and apps are crashing from lack of RAM. And even then, it triggers a callback and you have a few milliseconds to save your stuff in the background app.

So there is no connection between the phone status and saving stuff; and when there IS a need to save stuff, you get a callback activated. You would never be able to monitor the phone app from the front end process that gets killed, because the status would change first; the phone rings, the dialer app preempts your user interface, and you interface is already gone (if you're out of RAM) or switched to the background if not. And the backend already can get a callback to tell it that the front end went away; there is no utility in trying to figure out "why" because the whole programming paradigm requires assuming the front end interfaces will be killed frequently, and without notice. This is why there is a lot of emphasis on XML layouts. Traditional GUI apps it doesn't matter, you can generate widgets programmatically at application start. But with Android those would be regenerated constantly because the GUI part of the app is killed and restarted frequently.

Sounds backwards to me. The plans that are secret are NOT used for training unless the situation becomes likely to really happen. The plans that are secret are there to give guidance to the Generals when "something happens" and they have to give orders to start actual specific training for the soldiers.

A hint: the movement of troops, tanks, ships, planes, supply lines, that is what is *in* the secret plans.

Training is exactly what you don't do with a secret.

If your planning can only find one category, I'll be voting for somebody else to be in charge of planning. ;)

No, it means he's a furriner.

In these scenarios, a compatriot on a hilltop is not a concern. They warn each other, no big deal, they didn't warn their nation's Navy.

Wifi, presumably the internet is also cut at that time. Analog phones, probably just cutting international service would be effective. VHF/UHF will out his exact position, and the other side if he is trying to confirm receipt. Also, that can be jammed easily by standard military equipment. Sat phone is easy to jam, too.

None of that refutes the wisdom of planning, those are just additional details that would be in the plan. Even if the plan isn't expected to be 100% successful, it can still be a plan. It doesn't have to be Plan A, or Plan B, or L or M. If Plan M sucks, that is not going to be a surprise.

Or, if you want to save some money, just wrap the room in chicken wire and aluminum foil.

Works for hats, too. And you can keep your phablet under the hat when not in use.

I know, talk about overkill. What a waste of bandwidth.

Almost makes it sound like they won't need a search warrant anymore, as long as enough people build these things and put them into general use.

Nonsense, burns are well known causes of skin cancer. If your microwave is burning you, that is just as dangerous as the Sun burning you.

The easy tinfoil-free way to know if the radar is increasing your cancer risk: Does it hurt yet? Burns hurt. Stay safe. If your microwave causes pain, unplug.

Depends... did you install 3-phase industrial power in the garage to power the radar? No? Then you'll have to move the installation into the garage, most likely.

You want to see through walls across the street? I guess you better start buying up used smoke alarms.

Well to start with, the usual construction materials are ginger bread, or (for people that don't have ginger servants on hand) chocolate "bricks."

Lets say there is a bomb. And it has a phone attached. And you have inside information that it is really connected to a real cell phone. And you don't know where the person is with the other phone. And you know from your inside information that the timer will wait 6 hours before the fail-safe makes it blow up.

What if it is not a bomb. What if a war breaks out, and you know for a fact that there is an intelligence agent reporting over a regular cell phone, using coded words, about the movements of ships out of a harbor. Cutting off that flow of information while you set sail might be very valuable.

I'm not arguing for (or against) the wisdom of these policies. But there are obvious and legit reasons for the government to make plans for how to deal with unlikely emergencies.

They probably also have plans for what to do if we're invaded by Canada. Not because it is likely, but because a nation this large can afford to plan for unlikely things. Some of those unlikely things will actually happen.

As to this case, the Executive gets to tell the Court that their reason is that their conclusion is that National Security requires it. That it is their opinion makes it a good enough reason, because national security is not the business of the Court. Expect this story to be nothing, and go nowhere. For or against the policy, you should be able to see this approach will not yield any fruit.