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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Federal Judge Finds N.S.A. Wiretapping Program Illegal WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s program of surveillance without warrants was illegal, rejecting the Obama administration’s effort to keep shrouded in secrecy one of the most disputed counterterrorism policies of former President George W. Bush. In a 45-page opinion, Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled that the government had violated a 1978 federal statute requiring court approval for domestic surveillance when it intercepted phone calls of Al Haramain, a now-defunct Islamic charity in Oregon, and of two lawyers representing it in 2004. Declaring that the plaintiffs had been “subjected to unlawful surveillance,” the judge said the government was liable to pay them damages. The ruling delivered a blow to the Bush administration’s claims that its surveillance program, which Mr. Bush secretly authorized shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was lawful. Under the program, the National Security Agency monitored Americans’ international e-mail messages and phone calls without court approval, even though the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, required warrants. The Justice Department said it was reviewing the decision and had made no decision about whether to appeal. The ruling by Judge Walker, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, rejected the Justice Department’s claim — first asserted by the Bush administration and continued under President Obama — that the charity’s lawsuit should be dismissed without a ruling on the merits because allowing it to go forward could reveal state secrets. The judge characterized that expansive use of the so-called state-secrets privilege as amounting to “unfettered executive-branch discretion” that had “obvious potential for governmental abuse and overreaching.” That position, he said, would enable government officials to flout the warrant law, even though Congress had enacted it “specifically to rein in and create a judicial check for executive-branch abuses of surveillance authority.” Because the government merely sought to block the suit under the state-secrets privilege, it never mounted a direct legal defense of the N.S.A. program in the Haramain case. Judge Walker did not directly address the legal arguments made by the Bush administration in defense of the N.S.A. program after The New York Times disclosed its existence in December 2005: that the president’s wartime powers enabled him to override the FISA statute. But lawyers for Al Haramain were quick to argue that the ruling undermined the legal underpinnings of the war against terrorism. One of them, Jon Eisenberg, said Judge Walker’s ruling was an “implicit repudiation of the Bush-Cheney theory of executive power.” “Judge Walker is saying that FISA and federal statutes like it are not optional,” Mr. Eisenberg said. “The president, just like any other citizen of the United States, is bound by the law. Obeying Congressional legislation shouldn’t be optional with the president of the U.S.” A Justice Department spokeswoman, Tracy Schmaler, noted that the Obama administration had overhauled the department’s procedures for invoking the state-secrets privilege, requiring senior officials to personally approve any assertion before lawyers could make it in court. She said that approach would ensure that the privilege was invoked only when “absolutely necessary to protect national security.” The ruling is the second time a federal judge has declared the program of wiretapping without warrants to be illegal. But a 2006 decision by a federal judge in Detroit, Anna Diggs Taylor, was reversed on the grounds that those plaintiffs could not prove that they had been wiretapped and so lacked legal standing to sue. Several other lawsuits filed over the program have faltered because of similar concerns over standing or because of immunity granted by Congress to telecommunications companies that participated in the N.S.A. program. By contrast, the Haramain case was closely watched because the government inadvertently disclosed a classified document that made clear that the charity had been subjected to surveillance without warrants. Although the plaintiffs in the Haramain case were not allowed to use the document to prove that they had standing, Mr. Eisenberg and six other lawyers working on the case were able to use public information — including a 2007 speech by an F.B.I. official who acknowledged that Al Haramain had been placed under surveillance — to prove it had been wiretapped. Judge Walker’s opinion cataloged other such evidence and declared that the plaintiffs had shown they were wiretapped in a manner that required a warrant. He said the government had failed to produce a warrant, so he granted summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs. But Judge Walker limited liability in the case to the government as an institution, rejecting the lawsuit’s effort to hold Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, personally liable. Mr. Eisenberg said that he would seek compensatory damages of $20,200 for each of the three plaintiffs in the case — or $100 for each of the 202 days he said they had shown they were subjected to the surveillance. He said he would ask the judge to decide how much to award in punitive damages, a figure that could be up to 10 times as high. And he said he and his colleagues would seek to be reimbursed for their legal fees over the past five years. The 2005 disclosure of the existence of the program set off a national debate over the limits of executive power and the balance between national security and civil liberties. The arguments continued over the next three years, as Congress sought to forge a new legal framework for domestic surveillance. In the midst of the presidential campaign in 2008, Congress overhauled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to bring federal statutes into closer alignment with what the Bush administration had been secretly doing. The legislation essentially legalized certain aspects of the program. As a senator then, Barack Obama voted in favor of the new law, despite objections from many of his supporters. President Obama’s administration now relies heavily on such surveillance in its fight against Al Qaeda. The overhauled law, however, still requires the government to obtain a warrant if it is focusing on an American citizen or an organization inside the United States. The surveillance of Al Haramain would still be unlawful today if no court had approved it, current and former Justice Department officials said. But since Mr. Obama took office, the N.S.A. has sometimes violated the limits imposed on spying on Americans by the new FISA law. The administration has acknowledged the lapses but said they had been corrected.
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#2. To: DeaconBenjamin (#0)
No way ... ya mean the President ain't God, yet ? Listen up. It's this simple, really. If you operate your life in the "FEDERAL SYSTEM", regardless of the benefits the FEDERAL RESERVE BANK SYSTEM appears to offer you, your membership in that system subjects you to the summary judgments handed out by (YOUR PIMP) administrative assholes called judges, without the first concern about your "privileges" or that G.D. piece of paper. In the FEDERAL RESERVE BANK SYSTEM you only have standing to be sued by the government. (Occasionally, some wild eyed Judge like the one mentioned in this article will find a statute that allows him to offer some hope to the cattle). As a matter of fact, it's open season on you in the FEDERAL RESERVE BANK SYSTEM. Did anyone notice that there was NO MENTION OF THE CONSTITUTION in this article ??? This article makes mention of the State Secrets Privilege. That's kind of like why we are just finding out that Lee Harvey Oswald (you remember the LONE NUT ASSASSIN) actually worked for both the FBI and CIA. National Security surveillance and State Secrets Privilege is pure bullshit in a truly free society. Sealing the record in the Kennedy MURDER for 70 years is another flabbergasting chunk of UNCLE SAMBO'S horseshit that we're supposed to swallow WHOLE. Where's the National Security threat if Oswald was a lone nut and dead ? You people remaining in this MOSSAD / MI-6 / CIA run, baby killing, fascist/communist FEDERAL RESERVE BANK SYSTEM (despotism) have my best wishes, but as for me, I can't swallow chunks of shit the size these parasites intend to shove down your throats. [Recall 9-11] - Buildings falling into their own footprints as concrete is pulverized into tiny dust particles and 3000 people are cold bloodedly murdered with the complicity of all the above mentioned agencies (MOSSAD / MI-6 / CIA /) the President, V.P., and probably all of CONGRESS should make it clear that the fiends in D.C. are not our friends, at least not mine. I hate to say this here, I really do. Where are your fucking balls ? Do these asswipes have to butt fuck your wife or baby daughter before you say "enough" and stop CONtributing to the criminal syndicate ? Do creature comforts soothe your conscience or do you find yourself addicted to porn, dope or at the bottom of a bottle every day ? Don't think I find this abnormal behavior, I don't. These mad motherfuckers are ruining the most beautiful planet in the universe, and only we can stop it. Our propensities to escape pain, fear or our present reality usually manifest in some of these behaviors. How long can we run from our responsibility to put a fucking end to this unfettered raping of everything we used to hold dear by Barry (purple lips) Soetero and the boys at the IMF ? Resistance is THE LEAST WE CAN DO. When the resitance population hits 100 million the cocksukers at the World Bank will be running to their Rothschild (and other bankers so situated) Masters with the bad news that the herd has turned on them and a stampede is imminent. April 15th is really April FOOL'S DAY. NOTE: I have tried to use the term "COCKROACHS" to describe these vultures in the past rather than cocksuckers. I have decided to repent for denigrating cockroaches and apologize for the language used to describe the most vile and filthy scum on planet earth, but it cannot be avoided because it's true. Most of these intel agents work for the bankers and are full-fledged flaming faggots from hell, so they truly are cocksuckers in the simplest and purest use of the expression. Please, I'm begging. Quit sending these murdering cocksuckers money because they are hiring more FEDERAL fags and buying more guns to shoot us with. Let's send a long overdue message this April, and withold the protection monies. Charlie Rangel and Timothy Geithner didn't pay !!!
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