In this case, I expect that the judges on this special court can be dismissed from serving on the court at any time for any or no reason, as it’s a special court, convened for a special purpose, as opposed to traditional courts that have their nominees selected by the executive branch and confirmed by the legislative branch. Those judges dismissed from these duties would not be dismissed from their circuit court work, they’d just lose their “other duties as assigned”.
Unfortunately because the rulings are secret, one cannot challenge the validity of warrants issued by the court. While it’s certainly quite a burden to challenge a warrant in normal circumstances it is not impossible. Even warrants for conventional legal wiretapping have been successfully challenged and evidence collected in those cases has been ruled inadmissible, and sometimes even further discovery based on the now-inadmissible evidence has also been ruled inadmissible. A secret warrant might be impossible to challenge, along with the ‘fruit’ that it bore. Given that the surveillance isn’t narrow in scope and that data retention is for a fairly lengthy duration, data collected by one administration that doesn’t seek to use it for conventional purposes could be used by a following administration that does decide to be “tough on crime” and to use data for purposes that it wasn’t originally gathered for.
It’s a travesty that the Judiciary isn’t taking the approach needed to be truly independent like they’re supposed to be.
