Comments

You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name

Your e-mail (optional)

Website (optional)

	My Original Nic Pic-a-Nic Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Foto

Submit your comments on this article

Home Front: WoT

U.S. Appeals to Curcuit Court to Keep Surveillance Program

2006-10-14

DETROIT (AP) - The Justice Department on Friday asked a federal appeals court to throw out a lower court decision that said the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program is unconstitutional. Government lawyers said in pleadings filed Friday with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati that the surveillance program ``is necessary to protect the nation from an ongoing national security threat of the highest order and is vital to waging and winning the ongoing armed conflict.''

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit ruled Aug. 17 that the program violates the rights to free speech and privacy and the separation of powers. Taylor' injunction ``dismantles a vital tool that already has helped detect and disrupt al-Qaida plots,'' the Justice Department attorneys argued.

A three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based appeals court ruled Oct. 4 that the administration could keep the program in place while it appeals Diggs' decision. The judges said their ruling considered the likelihood an appeal would succeed, the potential damage to both sides, and the public interest.

The appeal is likely to take months.

Kary Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Michigan chapter, said Friday that the government's arguments buttressed ``a very dramatic power grab'' by the Bush administration. ``There's an awful lot of hyperbole in there, and fear mongering - suggesting we're at war when Congress has declared no war,'' Moss said. ``They want to act as a kingdom. But we live in a democracy.''

I don't know the color of the sky on Ms. Moss's planet. We've always been entitled to listen to enemy communications in a time of war or national emergency.

The surveillance program monitors international phone calls and e-mails to or from the United States involving people suspected by the government of having terrorist links. A secret court has been set up to grant warrants for such surveillance, but the government says it can't always wait for a court to act.

Again the MSM conflates the warrant program, designed to safeguard listening TO conversations, with the surveillance program, which looks at the external 'wrapper' of the conversation -- from what number, to what number, when, etc. No warrant is needed for that.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit in January seeking to stop the program on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers claiming it has made it difficult for them to do their jobs because they believe many of their overseas contacts are likely targets.

Posted by:Steve White

00:00