Constitutional Law
ACLU Sues Over New Wiretap Law
Posted Jul 10, 2008, 02:06 pm CDT
By Martha Neil
Updated: The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in federal court in New York today to try to prevent a new surveillance law approved by the Senate yesterday from being put into effect.
Signed today by President George Bush, the law approves "dragnet surveillance that has no connection to terrorism or criminal activity of any kind." It is also blatantly unconstitutional because it includes no safeguards to protect individuals' reasonable expectation of privacy in their international communications, Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU National Security Project said at an ACLU conference call with the media today that is still ongoing.
In an earlier ACLU press release he says that "the bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment."
The ACLU says it also filed a petition today in the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asking that any proceedings it may conduct concerning the new law's constitutionality be held publicly.
Updated at 2:30 p.m. to include information from ACLU teleconference.
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Comments
Posted by Daniel J. Schmitz - 1 month, 3 weeks, 4 days, 23 hours, 9 minutes ago
Not once in all the commentary is there one statement about the fact that the Constitution prohibits Ex Post Facto laws. To make a law that “retroactively” changes the law was correctly recognized to DESTROY the Rule of Law. If the Law does not mean what it says at the time it says because it can be Ex Post Facto changed then there is NO LAW....
That above all makes this law a GRAVE CRIME. The Democrats have shown themselves to be as bad as Bush and the Conservatives, what they are conserving I do not know because it isn’t the Constitution, Obama unfit for any office and McCain a coward....
Posted by Vernon R. Pederson - 1 month, 3 weeks, 4 days, 10 hours, 15 minutes ago
Back in the 1970’s Justice George Rose Smith of the Arkansas Supreme Court authored an April first opinion and submitted it for publication. It was published in the advance sheets but never made it into the final publication. It was entirely fictional. It would make an interesting subject for your staff to research and publish, maybe on April 1, 2009.
Justice Smith was a well recognized authority on language use and opinion writing. I learned a few things about opinion writing from him.
Posted by Justin - 1 month, 3 weeks, 4 days, 9 hours, 43 minutes ago
The U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Schmitz, has previously ruled that not all Ex Post Facto laws are constitutionally prohibited. Generally, if the law is not used to provide an additional punishment to an already sentenced convict, or to retroactively make an action illegal, it can be viewed as valid. Congress regularly passes statutes that “retroactively” changes the law.
Additionally, the ACLU has no case for this suit. Do they have an individual, or group of individuals that they can prove are actually affected by this law? Just like the last time they tried to bring this type of suit, they will not be able to prove any plaintiffs were harmed by the law- they can’t get the intelligence community to release the names of wire-tapped individuals. The intel community will cite national security concerns, and courts dislike forcing defendants to release information solely because lawyers (not plaintiffs) want to find clients.