Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Surveillance Court: NSA Can Resume Bulk Surveillance

Posted by Soulskill on from the two-steps-forward-two-steps-back dept.

An anonymous reader writes: We all celebrated back in May when a federal court ruled the NSA's phone surveillance illegal, and again at the beginning of June, when the Patriot Act expired, ending authorization for that surveillance. Unfortunately, the NY Times now reports on a ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which concluded that the NSA may temporarily resume bulk collection of metadata about U.S. citizens's phone calls. From the article: "In a 26-page opinion (PDF) made public on Tuesday, Judge Michael W. Mosman of the surveillance court rejected the challenge by FreedomWorks, which was represented by a former Virginia attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican. And Judge Mosman said that the Second Circuit was wrong, too. 'Second Circuit rulings are not binding' on the surveillance court, he wrote, 'and this court respectfully disagrees with that court's analysis, especially in view of the intervening enactment of the U.S.A. Freedom Act.' When the Second Circuit issued its ruling that the program was illegal, it did not issue any injunction ordering the program halted, saying that it would be prudent to see what Congress did as Section 215 neared its June 1 expiration."

1 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Knew it was too good to be true. by dunkindave · · Score: 4, Informative

    One other interesting note - all the judges on the FISC are solely appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, without any confirmation or oversight by Congress required.

    While Congress does not get any oversight of the appointing process itself, the Chief Justice can only appoint the judges from the pool of US District Court Judges. This means the judges on the FISA Court were first nominated by the President to become District Court Judges, and then confimed by the Senate, so there was some congressional oversight in terms of who could be appointed.

    I don't know if all of the current judges were picked by John Roberts or not, ...

    The FISA judges serve for seven years, and Roberts has been the Chief Justice since 2005, so yes, he picked all of the current judges.