Secretive Surveillance Program Goes to the Supreme Court

[unhappycamper]

http://truth-out.org/news/item/12356-secretive-surveillance-program-goes-to-the-supreme-court

Secretive Surveillance Program Goes to the Supreme Court
Saturday, 27 October 2012 09:13
By Staff, RT News | Report

The US government insists that Americans don’t have the right to challenge a law that lets the National Security Agency eavesdrop on the intimate communications of anyone in the country, but all of that could now change as early as next week.

The Supreme Court will officially start their second session of the year on Monday, and first on the agenda is a matter that could eventually shatter the government’s ability to order wiretaps on the emails and phones of any US citizen without ever obtaining a warrant.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was put into place in the 1970s to install safeguards to keep Americans safe from unlawful eavesdropping. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, though, the George W. Bush administration ordered amendments to the law that have ever since allowed the NSA to monitor the communications of any US citizen as long as the government suspects that they are corresponding with anyone outside of the country.

Last month, the US House of Representatives voted to reauthorize the 2008 FISA Amendment Act (FAA), but not without attracting criticism from some very concerned parties. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a legal brief warning, “Under the FAA, the government can target anyone — human rights researchers, academics, attorneys, political activists, journalists — simply because they are foreigners outside the United States, and in the course of its surveillance it can collect Americans’ communications with those individuals.”

[Jackpine Radical]

1. If ACLU's agin it,

the Extreme Court is fer it.

No deeper analysis need be done.

And iirc, they can also eavesdrop on domestic communications by the simple expedient of routing them outside the country at some point in the transmission.

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt

[snot]

3. K&R'd!