ACLU requests Supreme Court review of warrantless wiretaps

Nick Juliano
Raw Story
Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Attempting to force a definitive ruling on the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping scheme, the American Civil Liberties Union has asked the Supreme Court to consider an appeal of its lawsuit against the National Security Agency.

The ACLU joined with lawyers, scholars and journalists who argue that the NSA's possible interception of their phone calls and e-mails violated their rights and interfered with their jobs.

The Supreme Court petition comes as Congress is considering a permanent update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that the ACLU says would give President Bush even more authority to intercept Americans' communications than he claimed in authorizing the warrantless wiretapping program.

The ACLU's lawsuit was dismissed earlier this year by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the plaintiffs were ineligible to sue the government because they could not prove their communications were intercepted. The administration has refused to release details about the program's scope or the number of Americans who were eavesdropped on, saying such information is classified.

“The president has claimed the power to disregard any law that, in his view, infringes on his ability to collect intelligence,” Steven R. Shapiro, National Legal Director of the ACLU, said in statement. “The government should not be able to avoid scrutiny of its surveillance activities simply by refusing to identify the victims of its unlawful behavior.”

The ACLU argues that the 2-1 appeals court decision was wrongly decided and did not address the underlying legality of the NSA program. The Supreme Court ought to intervene, the ACLU argues, because of the need for a definitive judicial ruling on the program.

In its petition to the court, the ACLU outlines past government abuses of its surveillance authority that led to FISA's passage, such as spying on suspected Communists in the 1950s to wiretaps of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights and anti-war activists during the Nixon administration.

A judicial review of the program's merits is needed to prevent similar abuses of Americans' privacy rights under the new program, the ACLU argues.

“Innocent people who are harmed by illegal government surveillance should be able to challenge that surveillance in court,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “It should not be left to executive branch officials alone to determine what limits apply to government surveillance and whether those limits are being honored.”