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U.S. Government Intervenes in EFF vs. AT&T
An anonymous reader writes "Reuters is reporting that the US government has 'filed a motion on Saturday to intervene and seek dismissal of a lawsuit by a civil liberties group against AT&T Inc. over a federal program to monitor U.S. communications.' More from the article: " In its motion seeking intervention, posted on the court's Web site, the government said the interests of the parties in the lawsuit "may well be in the disclosure of state secrets" in their effort to present their claims or defenses ... A hearing is scheduled for June 21 before federal Judge Vaughn Walker." You may recall a few weeks ago when the DOJ asked the judge to dismiss the case. They've now taken the next step required to quash this legal action.
Text of motion: Government's Motion to Dismiss, or for Summary Judgment [PDF, 1.8M]
EFF's page on the case: http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/
But there does need to be some avenue for the government to actually have a functioning intelligence system. Warrents are for criminal prosecution. This is about foreign intelligence.
I think this displays a serious misunderstanding about the law and the way our system works.
The warrants in question are obtained from a court that is explicitly designed to deal with foreign intelligence, called the "Foreign Intelligence Survellience Court". The law in question is called the "Foreign Intelligence Survellience Act" (FISA). They were set up expressly for the purpose of dealing with foreign intelligence issues and the wiretaps necessary to carry out intelligence gathering.
No objection has been put forth that the current law cannot deal with. The one thing that the law wouldn't allow for is abuse of the system. In other words, the fact that they're avoiding the law and the system strongly implies that it's being abused.
The FISA system has been in place for three decades, and has dealt with tens of thousands of wiretap requests quite successfully. And because the "foreign intelligence" apparatus can be abused to harm Americans, that system provides oversight and a check.
Seriously, the arguments you're making could just as easily be used to justify putting cameras and microphones in everyone's houses.
Kythe
Yup. The executive branch can commit all kinds of fraud which the courts will constitute a "political question" because they could not undertake independent resolution of the issues "without expressing lack of the respect due a coordinate branches of government." There's an enlightening discussion in US v. Stahl, 792 F.2d 1438 (9th Cir. 1986).
I don't think any Saturday Night Live skit is as repetitious and hackneyed as people who call out Godwin's Law. OMG LOL I POINTED OUT THAT SOMEONE USED HITLER IN A COMPARISON ON THE INTERNET. Shut up, nobody cares, and I hope -more- people use Hitler as a comparison to Bush because it's entirely appropriate, despite what all the conservative right-wing fuckwit crybabies -- such as yourself -- say.
It should be noted that Mr. Hayden, Bush's nominee to lead the CIA (after the hasty departure of the felonious Mr. Goss and his #3-in-command Mr. Foggo), recently stated in a press conference that the words "probable cause" do not appear in the 4th Amendment.