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Re:Germans Loved Obama. Now We Don’t Trust Him by mpyne on Sunday June 30, 2013 @09:47PM (#5968170)
The laws underlying those gag orders are also public, transparent, debated beforehand, etc.

The principle of the gag order comes from the implementation of the law. Obviously the public law itself allows gag orders, otherwise Google's lawyers would tell Google to go ahead and publish them. Gag orders have been around in America, at all levels of law enforcement and security, since waaaaay before all this.

Re:Germans Loved Obama. Now We Don’t Trust Him by DoubleMalt on Sunday June 30, 2013 @10:03PM (#5968218)
This is a big defect in the American justice system imho.
Re:Germans Loved Obama. Now We Don’t Trust Him by mpyne on Monday July 01, 2013 @12:00AM (#5968555)
Nothing more than OPSEC, really.

The big defect is allowing long-duration (or even permanent) gag orders, and not just for the NSA-style stuff. There's been quite a few court cases where parties settle on something which is public-interest but the judge seals the whole damn case forever.