February 19th, 2008
Supreme Court declines warrantless wiretapping case
The ACLU and other organizations attempted to sue the government for a warrantless wiretapping program called the Terrorist Surveillance Program. A U.S. District Court decided to let the suit go forward but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals shot the case down, saying the plaintiffs had no standing unless they could show that they were the targets of the wiretaps — which they couldn’t do because the government’s “state secrets” privilege blocked them from accessing that information.
The ACLU calls that a Catch-22, but the U.S. Supreme Court was unmoved, declining cert.
“It’s very disturbing that the president’s actions will go unremarked upon by the court,” said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s national security project. “In our view, it shouldn’t be left to executive branch officials alone to determine the limits.”
(AP
The so-called “liberal” 9th Circuit came to the same conclusion as the 6th in a suit brought by the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation. The Foundation had receive by mistake a top-secret call log it wanted to introduce into evidence but the appeal court said it was protected by the state secrets privilege.
