Secret Surveillance...Civil-liberties groups ask high court to limit U.S.
spying powers
By Gina Holland
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Civil-liberties groups are using a long-shot approach in an
effort to get the Supreme Court to limit the government's power to spy,
filing an appeal yesterday on behalf of people who don't even know they're
being monitored.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations hope to draw the
justices into their first post-Sept. 11, 2001, anti-terror case with a
challenge of the Justice Department's surveillance powers.
Congress gave the government broader spying authority after the terrorist
attacks. The ACLU argued that a review court misinterpreted the law, making
it too easy for the government to get permission to listen to telephone
conversations, read e-mail and search private property, and then use the
information in criminal cases.
The ACLU and other critics worry there are not enough checks to ensure the
government's snooping doesn't stretch to law-abiding citizens.
The Supreme Court might not allow the appeal because the ACLU was not one
of the parties in the review court case.
The ACLU, joined by American-Arab groups, argue that they represent people
who are being monitored under warrants approved by the super-secret Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court, or "spy court." The court deals with
intelligence requests involving suspected spies, terrorists or foreign agents.
"The irony is no one can know for certain whether they are the subject of
these secret surveillance orders because they're secret," said Ann Beeson,
ACLU's associate legal director.
The November ruling by the review court was a victory for the Bush
administration, which argues that the surveillance is a key component of
its war on terror.
The ruling removed legal barriers between the surveillance operations of
the Justice Department's criminal and intelligence divisions. The two had
been treated differently because the standard for criminal wiretaps,
instead of those granted by the spy court, is considered more difficult
because of the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and
seizures.
The decision "opens the door to surveillance abuses that seriously
threatened our democracy in the past," justices were told in the filing by
the ACLU, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Arab Community Center
for Economic and Social Services.
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