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ACLU Files Lawsuit Challenging FISA

Posted by Soulskill on from the battle-of-the-four-letter-acronyms dept.

Wired's Threat Level blog reports that the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit contesting the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Recently passed by both the House and Senate, FISA was signed into law on Thursday by President Bush. The ACLU has fought aspects of FISA in the past. The new complaint (PDF) alleges the following: "The law challenged here supplies none of the safeguards that the Constitution demands. It permits the government to monitor the communications of U.S. Citizens and residents without identifying the people to be surveilled; without specifying the facilities, places, premises, or property to be monitored; without observing meaningful limitations on the retention, analysis, and dissemination of acquired information; without obtaining individualized warrants based on criminal or foreign intelligence probable cause; and, indeed, without even making prior administrative determinations that the targets of surveillance are foreign agents or connected in any way, however tenuously, to terrorism."

10 of 542 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting... by Adreno · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... that both Obama and McCain support this measure. Is this a reflection of middle America's concerns?

    1. Re:Interesting... by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Is this a reflection of middle America's concerns?

      No. I don't know three people that know FISA from Adam's Housecat. And of the two I DO know, neither thinks it's nearly so important as how many times the Mayor of Mandeville is going to get a free pass on his drunken driving.

      Hate to break it to you, but most of America has been impacted by the anti-terror legislation not even the slightest. And thus has little reason to really care about it....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    2. Re:Interesting... by dunnius · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is why I fear that a revolution may be the only option left for our country. It really is unfortunate that the two major candidates have decided to take a daily crap on the Constitution.

    3. Re:Interesting... by imipak · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The only option at this point is to begin militant action against our failed government institution. Unfortunately we would have no backing because the TV still spews its garbage and the people are sated.

      And that, ladies gentlemen and geek masses, is just one reason why the "...to overthrow the government if they turn into a tyranny!" argument in support of the 2nd Amendment is baloney. Try it and see whether the general public see you as a terrorist or a patriot. Have you planned what you'd like for your last meal? (Oh yeah, and even if you DID somehow manage to raise a large, angry mob of enraged disenchanted ex-mainstreamers, how well d'you think you'd do against a modern military? Hmmmm, I suppose if the numbers were that great there'd be a split in the military as well as the general public. Sounds like a good recipe for some dystopian near-term future fiction to me!) (Note -- I'm not saying there are no other arguments in favour of the 2nd amendment, just that that one, which was the original intent of the framers, doesn't wash any more.)

  2. Hey Obama! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am half tempted to tell those solicitors for presidential campaign donations that I gave their $150 donation to the ACLU instead.

  3. Re:Maybe that is 110% true. by tjstork · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just because something makes sense doesn't make it constitutional. Congress can't make an end run around the Constitution. Don't like the way the Constitution prevents such and such? Amend the Constitution.

    It really depends on what the intent of the bill of rights is. In the case of search and seizure, there's some that would argue that the they were not trying to instill a right to privacy as much as they were trying to guard against the federal government repeating a popular tactic of the king, which was to send out his agents to disrupt people's lives by rummaging through people's stuff and periodically arrest them. The idea is, sometimes, yes, the government does have to disrupt people's lives by rummage through their stuff.

    Now, the question is, does, a broad data mining and "hit" search constitute a disruption? You don't know if the government is searching you, right now, so does it disrupt you?

    I mean, we have our data searched by the private sector all the time and quite honestly many of us on this board are getting paid to develop tools to gather and manage this data, and worse, in the early days, many of us built these big data farms thinking that it would be cool. Woops.

    --
    This is my sig.
  4. Complicated by bussdriver · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sometimes laws that have no chance of surviving the courts are supported as a form of pandering.

    Nothing new in this case EXCEPT:

    The Supreme court is corrupt and the republic has already fallen (making it just entertainment for the politically active.)

    The population should be against it, so a move like this by Obama when he has a history of abstaining on this stuff is extremely interesting as to what really must be going on. We are not allowed to hear what he does; could be the CIA is feeding them more lies and Obama isn't wise enough (since he wasn't privy on the Iraq vote I never bought his line about always opposing the war.) OR certain powerful forces demand the passing of the bill and Obama serves or must kiss their ass.

    No, I'm not a Hillary supporter. Hillary voted against it but I'm confident if she were in his shoes she would have voted for it FOR THE SAME CURIOUS REASONS.

    --
    Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
    1. Re:Complicated by zappepcs · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You are correct, Obama has changed tunes and the reason is unclear. The CIA was told what information to feed the rest of government; they tried to give the right information.

      Obama is for all intents and purposes looking exactly like a bait and switch candidate. Not like we've not seen any of those before. The only thing that can change this is things like this lawsuit, massive communications among the people/bloggers/news outlets etc. as to what it does mean.

      I'm still waiting to hear what that Obama change is going to be. So far it's looking like only a change of skin color, politics and lawlessness remains the same. Paul and Barr would both bring change. The fact that they are against much of what supports the current corruption and lack of support for them by both main parties is significant.

      The one certain way to find out what that 'SAME CURIOUS REASON' is would be to elect someone that seems unaffected by it to see what rats jump ship while it's burning.

      OT: BTW does anyone know of any snippet of code to mail spam legislators with emails regarding how they should vote? There is probably a website that does, many let you write them on specific issues, but does anyone know of one that allows a person to contact all of them with a single letter?

      --
      Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
  5. Obama was smart to vote for FISA even opposing it! by Drake42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Obama was smart to vote for this, even though he opposed it!

    1) It would have passed anyway without his vote
    2) McCain abstained, so Obama can hammer him as being 'weak' on terrorism and bring more Republicans away from the McCain camp.

    It's just like any other tactical game. If you give away something that doesn't matter (a vote on a lost cause) to gain something valuable (a weapon against your opponent) then you're playing a smart game.

  6. Attack plan R by johnny+cashed · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Israel=General Ripper US=Buck Turgidson