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Warrantless Wiretapping Decisions Issued By Ninth Circuit Court

Posted by Soulskill on from the win-some-lose-some dept.

sunbird writes "The Ninth Circuit yesterday issued two decisions in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuits against the National Security Agency (Jewel v. NSA) and the telecommunications companies (Hepting v. AT&T). EFF had argued in Hepting that the retroactive immunity passed by Congress was unconstitutional. The Ninth Circuit decision (PDF) upholds the immunity and the district court's dismissal of the case. Short of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, this effectively ends the suit against the telecoms. In much better news, the same panel issued a decision (PDF) reversing the dismissal of the lawsuit against the N.S.A. and remanded the case back to the lower court for more proceedings. These cases have been previously discussed here."

5 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Rights..... by P-niiice · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hey, why not? We already have unlimited detention without charges/evidence/probable cause. Might as well go for it all.

  2. Nuremburg Defense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Great. The Ninth Circuit just made it OK to use "I was just following orders" as a defense, if you're a telecom.

    1. Re:Nuremburg Defense by tnk1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think the point is that Congress can't retroactively make a law that holds someone criminally liable for something that they did in the past before the law was passed, but they *can* and always have been able to make a law that retroactively removes something that was a crime in the past. The idea is to protect people from being held accountable for something that was perfectly legal in the past, but there is no reason to have a protection to keep people as criminals even after the law that criminalized them was overturned.

      In this case, the problem is that it does allow illegal activity to be condoned officially later on, as long as they don't get caught until the law is passed. That said, I think it is a political question, not a judicial question. It may well be that a law accidentally criminalizes a well-meaning person who is actually guilty by the letter of the law, but not by the intent of its framers. For that reason, I'd probably have to agree with the court and state that nothing prevents Congress, as the legislative branch, from absolving or nullifying previous criminal behavior by legislation.

    2. Re:Nuremburg Defense by Kjella · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For that reason, I'd probably have to agree with the court and state that nothing prevents Congress, as the legislative branch, from absolving or nullifying previous criminal behavior by legislation.

      So far that's fine but Congress should not be able to absolve breaking the constitution without amending the constitution. So if your fourth amendment rights were violated, Congress shouldn't have the power to pass a regular law granting immunity to those who broke it. In that case you might as well use the constitution as toilet paper.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  3. Re:Impeach by similar_name · · Score: 5, Informative
    There is Article 1, section 9 of the Constitution

    No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed

    Of course courts have interpreted it to not apply to all laws. I guess the wording was too vague.