Thursday, October 11, 2012
Court upholds U.S. gov’t immunity in terror eavesdropping
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday left in place a law that allows the Justice Department to stop suits against telecommunications companies for participating in wiretaps of potential terrorists.
The ruling was a key setback for civil libertarians challenging the broader powers of government since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States to use electronic surveillance to track potential threats in the name of national security.
The Justices declined to take up a challenge to the once-secret domestic eavesdropping program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — this one involving the monitoring of information moving into and out of the United States.
Previous petitions dealing with alleged abuses of the surveillance law also have been rejected by the court. Another case will be heard later this month.
In this case, Verizon Communications, Sprint Nextel, and AT&T were accused of privacy violations by assisting the government with intelligence gathering following the hijack attacks on New York and Washington.
The law had previously required the government to justify a national security interest before any phone calls and emails originating in another country could be monitored. A federal judge had to sign any search warrant. But President George W. Bush secretly suspended that requirement following the attacks.
Full article: http://www.cnn.com/2 … veillance/index.html
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