Recovering Wall Street Employee Speaks Out about the "1%"

[Ghost Dog]

15. Feds Demand Dismissal of Dragnet-Surveillance Challenge

Citing week-old Supreme Court precedent, the President Barack Obama administration told a federal judge Wednesday that it should quash a federal lawsuit accusing the government of secretly siphoning Americans’ electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants.

The San Francisco federal court legal filing was in response to U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White’s written question (.pdf) to the government asking what to make of the high court’s Feb. 26 decision halting a legal challenge to a once-secret warrantless surveillance project that gobbles up Americans’ electronic communications — a program that Congress eventually legalized in 2008 and again in 2012.

In that case, known as Clapper, the justices ruled 5-4 that the American Civil Liberties Union, journalists and human-rights groups that sued to nullify the FISA Amendments Act had no legal standing to sue. The justices ruled (.pdf) the plaintiffs submitted no evidence they were being targeted by that law.

The FISA Amendments Act authorizes the government to electronically eavesdrop on Americans’ phone calls and e-mails without a probable-cause warrant so long as one of the parties to the communication is outside the United States. The communications may be intercepted “to acquire foreign intelligence information.”

The filing the government submitted Wednesday concerns a lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that accuses the government of vacuuming up all of Americans’ electronic communications with the assistance of the nation’s telecoms, in violation of the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches. The EFF claims the dragnet surveillance program commenced under the George W. Bush administration following 9/11...

/... http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/terminate-spy-challenge/