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US Gov't Can't Be Sued For Warrantless Wiretapping
Wired has an article about a ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals saying the government can't be sued over intercepting phone calls without a warrant. The decision (PDF) vacated an earlier ruling which allowed a case to be brought against the government. The plaintiffs in the case argued that the government had implicitly waived sovereign immunity, but today's ruling points out that it can only be waived explicitly. Judge McKeown wrote, "This case effectively brings to an end the plaintiffs’ ongoing attempts to hold the Executive Branch responsible for intercepting telephone conversations without judicial authorization." The ruling does, however, take time to knock down the government's claim that the case was brought frivolously: "In light of the complex, ever-evolving nature of this litigation, and considering the significant infringement on individual liberties that would occur if the Executive Branch were to disregard congressionally-mandated procedures for obtaining judicial authorization of international wiretaps, the charge of 'game-playing' lobbed by the government is as careless as it is inaccurate. Throughout, the plaintiffs have proposed ways of advancing their lawsuit without jeopardizing national security, ultimately going so far as to disclaim any reliance whatsoever on the Sealed Document. That their suit has ultimately failed does not in any way call into question the integrity with which they pursued it."
I'm sure they have to justify their action to their corporate owners come next election.
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Is Wiretapping Legal Now?
Why, that depends. It would still be illegal for you to do it. Laws that can be enforced selectively are the most convenient!
Oh, wait a minute. He left office almost 4 years ago....
Doesn't matter - he's the one who made it law, so you're perfectly justified in taking him to task for it.
Just like how anyone blaming Obama for his failure* to not only abolish said unconstitutional laws, but expand upon them, is equally justified.
* failure to us. I'm sure the corporate masters who really run this nation consider it a rousing success.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
There is no law, except as a rhetoric for justifying power.
You are not a citizen - but merely a subject.
It is 1164 AD - with Nike shoes and a Prius on the curb.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
For decades we have held that phone calls are private communications that require a warrant to intercept per the 4th Amendment. The Federal Government isn't arguing that they haven't violated the 4th. They're arguing that they're immune from any legal attempts to hold them accountable for violating the 4th.
That's terrifying. It's so bad it makes me think I've wandered into tin foil hat territory, until I read the article:
The San Francisco-based appeals court ruled that when Congress wrote the law regulating eavesdropping on Americans and spies, it never waived sovereign immunity in the section prohibiting targeting Americans without warrants. That means Congress did not allow for aggrieved Americans to sue the government, even if their constitutional rights were violated by the United States breaching its own wiretapping laws.
That's Terry Gilliam "Brazil" logic, right there. The government is literally arguing they're violating the 4th Amendment, but that no one has the authority to hold them accountable. Literally, that the King is above the law. This ruling is so bad that not only does it violate the Bill of Rights, it violates the Magna Carta.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
This ruling is proof that the government is in fact above the law. The constitution means dick if you can't get the courts to enforce it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
FTA:
Huh? The judiciary is abdicating its own power here. It is the actions of the executive in violation of clearly spelled out laws that is the problem here. Are they suggesting that government workers cannot be sued for clear negligence w.r.t. the law because Congress did not authorize it? Did the lawyers in this case sue the legislative branch, or the executive? They should have sued the executive, and they should have won.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
What about deprivation of rights under color of law? They've already confirmed that 4th amendment protected rights were violated. Now, we're just talking about how to hold those responsible accountable for their actions.
18 USC 242 - Deprivation of rights under color of law:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
If I have this correctly, here's what the government has just told us:
1. We violated the 4th Amendment to the Constitution.
2. If you would like redress to your grievances, see line 3, below.
3. Fuck You.
Am I still a tinfoil-hatter, now?
Think about it some, who enforces the decisions of Federal courts? The Federal government. So if you brought suit against the Federal government and won, who would enforce the decision? The Feds?? You're asking the government to arrest themselves... which can't be done. You would have to make a new federal government to arrest the old one.
That would mean the courts have the power to overthrow the Federal government, which they don't.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
In fact the only time a federal court has prospectively used its injunctive power to prevent constitutional violations was in Brown v. Board of Education. And that's about to end, because Chief Justice Roberts has explicitly stated that he wants to end that and similar federal practices which arose out of the civil rights movement.
You're arguing that we have the Bill of Rights, but no one has the authority to enforce them, which for all practical purposes means we have no Bill of Rights.
Man, I don't want to go all ITG here, but seriously, too many members of my family have pledged to defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic to ever allow that to stand. Do you honestly believe Patrick Henry or Thomas Jefferson would agree with your stance, that we fought a Revolution for rights and liberties which don't exist in the application?
Again, I'm loathe to sound like some Tea Party nut, but we seem to have arrived at a Constitutional Crisis with an Executive branch that is on a power-mad three-day-drunk. At the local level, we have police departments claiming that merely documenting their activities is a criminal offense. We have the TSA telling a Federal Court that they don't have to do anything they don't wanna do. We have the DOJ telling another Federal Court they don't have to respect the 4th Amendment and "You're not the Boss of me!" We have a president who claims the right to order the execution of any American citizen without trial.
Clinton, Bush, Obama -- it doesn't seem to matter WHO holds the office, it's the office itself that's out of control. Personally, I think the writing's been on the wall since we let Nixon escape a jail term.
It is long, long past time we pull the Executive back into balance.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Never mind the fact that we along with a few others enjoy privileges that others both current and historical would give their lives for; lets count those as rubbish and bemoan our fate.
Exactly. We can only start complaining the very moment they show up and load us into cattle cars bound for the gas chambers. Until they drop the cyanide canister in, everyone needs to STFU and consider themselves lucky it's not worse off.
By the way, you're retarded.
I'm sure they have to justify their action to their corporate owners come next election.
The premise of the SyFy channels new show "Continuum" seems more and more real...
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
You are NOT an object. That is way too passive.
You are a consumer.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!