The silent witness rule is the use of "substitutions" when referring to sensitive information in the United States open courtroom jury trial system.
[1] Lamb argues that the silent witness rule would enable trials to go ahead that would otherwise be dismissed because of the state secrets privilege.
He especially points out El-Masri v. Tenet, in which a German citizen was allegedly kidnapped and raped by CIA agents but was never allowed to present his case in court, and United States v. Reynolds, in which widows of Air Force contractors sued the government; both cases were dismissed because the government claimed the trial would reveal national secrets.
Bishop, in the Baltimore Sun, writes that lawyers say the "secret codes quickly become confusing and risk violating the defendant's constitutional rights to a public trial".
[5] Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project called it an "oxymoron", and pointed out that it "would still allow jurors to see classified information, defeating the whole purpose of classification".