Slashdot Mirror
Wiretapping Program Ruled Legal
BuhDuh writes "The New York Times is carrying a story concerning that well known bastion of legal authority, the 'Foreign Intelligence Surveillance' court, which has ruled that the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program was perfectly legal. It says, 'A federal intelligence court, in a rare public opinion, is expected to issue a major ruling validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a court order, even when Americans' private communications may be involved, according to a person with knowledge of the opinion.'"
This is about the program under the law passed by Congress which authorized warrantless wiretapping after the President was doing it; not the program which was carried out prior to that by the President in direct contravention to the prohibitions of the statute law existing at the time.
Of course, one might reasonably question whether the decision comports with the Constitution even there, but its an important distinction to make, since there have been issues both with the power of government as a whole and the independent power of the President, regardless of the laws passed by Congress relating to warrantless wiretapping, and the two issues sometimes get muddled.
We can hope with fingers crossed that one of the conservative scumbags retires or dies very soon.
Scumbags really depends on your point of view and the particular case in question. I can think of at least three cases off the top of my head where the so-called liberal justices were the scumbags:
Gonzales v. Raich: The Federal Government can arrest cancer patients for using cannabis even where such use is legal under State law. The liberals (joined by Scalia and Kennedy) all voted in favor of it. O'Connor, Rehnquist and Thomas opposed it.
Kelo v. City of New London: The State can seize your private property for the benefit of private (i.e: Wal-Mart) development. The Liberals (joined by Kennedy) didn't have any problems with this. Scalia, O'Connor, Rehnquist and Thomas all dissented.
District of Columbia v. Heller: The Liberals all dissented in this case, which held that the 2nd amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. Apparently that's too much freedom for them.
Those are just the ones that I can think of off the top my head. Trust me when I say that the Liberal wing of the court is no better at protecting our rights.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The Constitutional Law is clear that wuch wiretapping is not allowed unless the police can get a warrant issued by a judge.
Its not so clear. In the early days of wiretapping, no warrant was required for anyone; as phone calls were not thought to be "persons, houses, papers, and effects". Don't get me wrong, I like that warrants are needed, but the issue has not always been so clear cut.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Repatriate just means to send back to their country of origin. It doesn't mean that they were citizens of the U.S. Geez people, patriot doesn't mean American.
you are aware that U.S. citizens are being held at Guantanamo?
No, but there is a Canadian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khadr, who was 15 years old at the time of the alleged crimes.
Intelligence collection on non-US Persons outside of the US has never required a warrant, throughout the entire history of the United States.
The difference occurred when traffic of non-US Persons outside of the US started traveling through the US. Suddenly a warrant is required because digital traffic passed through a routing center in Chicago when one end is in Pakistan and the other is in Saudi Arabia? That's what the now-sunset Protect America Act temporarily fixed, and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 permanently fixes.
If you believe that a warrant should be required for intelligence collection on persons outside of the US with no legal standing of any kind with the US (i.e., citizen, vistor, legal resident, etc.), then you are completely out of step with all law, intelligence policy, and scholarship on the issue.
FISA is a dedicated branch of the Federal Court system set up for the sole purpose of handling warrants for the intelligence agencies. All of it's members are required to have a Top Secret or better security clearance and it is very much a closed door court.
Most of the paperwork that goes through FISA is classified in some way or another, so its not available for review like normal court documents. In some ways, it's a lot more like a Grand Jury where everything is sealed until after the trial. The only problem is that Intelligence agency work is almost never done, so nothing ever becomes unsealed.
As for history, FISA was created in response to Nixon & Watergate. It satisfied the needs of the intelligence community to be able to work in secret inside the US to handle cross border work, while still maintaining checks & balances on the actual activity. Currently, god only knows what kind of check it's actually performing - last report I saw was rating @ 99+% approval of warrant requests.
Yaser Esam Hamdi - American Citizen, Enemy Combatant. The Supreme Court denied the executive request to hold him indefinitely without trial. He was handed over to Saudi Arabia after being stripped of citizenship.
John Walker Lindh - American Citizen, Enemy Combatant. Entered a guilty plea on 2 of his 10 charges; carrying weapons and serving in the Taliban army. Currently serving 20 years in an American prison.
The most disturbing case, however, is that of Jose Padilla, who was never held in Guantanamo, to our knowledge, but is an American citizen arrested in the United States and declared an enemy combatant. He very likely was an "evil doer(TM)" but the way his case was handled was disturbing to say the least.
When your government has the right to listen in on your communications, interpret them as they see fit, and make you disappear without justifying the cause to anyone but themselves you've set up a powerful system for abuse. If not by those that set it up, by someone that takes the reigns of power down the road.
To be entitled to prisoner-of-war status, captured service members must be lawful combatants entitled to combatant's privilegeâ"which gives them immunity from punishment for crimes constituting lawful acts of war, e.g., killing enemy troops. To qualify under the Third Geneva Convention as a POW, a combatant must have conducted military operations according to the laws and customs of war, be part of a chain of command, wear a "fixed distinctive marking, visible from a distance" and bear arms openly.