"This fight is not over." ACLU will challenge FISA update in court

[BlueJessamine]

Source: Raw Story

As the Senate voted to endorse a Bush-administration backed plan to expand its surveillance authority and grant retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that facilitated warrantless wiretapping, the American Civil Liberties Union unveiled plans to challenge the new law in court.

“This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project, in a statement provided to RAW STORY as the Senate was voting. “The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment.”

After defeating three attempts to improve the update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Senate was expected to President Bush a FISA update Wednesday. Senators began voting around 2:15 p.m.

For two and a half years, Congress has been deliberating over how to update FISA, which became law in 1978, to account for technological advances in the last three decades. Critics say President Bush simply ignored the law in ordering the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans' conversations with people abroad without first getting warrants from a secret FISA court.



Read more: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/ACLU_will_challenge_FISA_update_in_0709.html