The ACLU continues to keep it real.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit Thursday over a controversial wiretapping law, challenging the constitutionality of the expanded spy powers Congress granted to the president on Wednesday.
The ACLU consistently takes on Big Important cases that make a difference to our liberties in this country. If you don’t regularly give them money, I strongly urge you to start doing so. Consider giving $10 a month with the “guardian” option. This isn’t some random charity that helps people, animals, etc.– this is one of the most important organizations in the US, working every day to maintain a free society.
FISA Farce Passes
In January, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) vowed to join a filibuster against legislation that would grant immunity to telecommunication companies who participated in President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program for years. But on July 9, the presumptive presidential candidate threw his support behind “compromise” legislation that eviscerates the Fourth Amendment and greatly expands the government’s power to monitor your email and telephone conversations.
Probable cause and warrants for electronic surveillance? Goodbye to all that! Congress capitulated on the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) and opened the floodgates for the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect the communications of billions of people overseas and seize millions of international communications of Americans. This includes the emails from your cousin who enlisted in the U.S. Army and was sent to Iraq.
The latest legislation whittles down the checks and balances of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, which was designed to balance protecting Americans’ domestic conversations while outlining specific circumstances and legal procedures for the wiretapping of those people abroad who mean us harm. Only “foreign powers and agents of a foreign power” could be tapped with a FISA warrant, available from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It didn’t seem difficult to go through the process — the court only turned down only a handful of wiretap warrants of some 20,000 requests during its 30- year history. So spying on the likes of Muammar al-Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was never hard.
To view the rest of this article, see http://www.indypendent.org/2008/07/18/fisa-farce-passes/