Reply #57: Behind the Surveillance Debate = Capitol Hill bid to grant Bush new authority

[L. Coyote]

Behind the Surveillance Debate
A federal judge's secret ruling restricting the intelligence community's surveillance powers helped spur a Capitol Hill bid to grant Bush new authority.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20075751/site/newsweek/

Web exclusive
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 1 hour, 50 minutes ago

Aug. 1, 2007 - A secret ruling by a federal judge has restricted the U.S. intelligence community's surveillance of suspected terrorists overseas and prompted the Bush administration's current push for "emergency" legislation to expand its wiretapping powers, according to a leading congressman and a legal source who has been briefed on the matter.

The order by a judge on the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court has never been publicly acknowledged by administration officials-and the details of it (including the identity of the judge who wrote it) remain highly classified. But the judge, in an order several months ago, apparently concluded that the administration had overstepped its legal authorities in conducting warrantless eavesdropping even under the scaled-back surveillance program that the White House first agreed to permit the FISA court to review earlier this year, said one lawyer who has been briefed on the order but who asked not to be publicly identified ........