Appeals Court Holds Firm: The Government Cannot Be Sued For Violating Its Own Wiretapping Laws
from the US-Government-issues-blank-check-for-4th-Amendment-violators dept
There's more bad news on the Fourth Amendment front as the appeals court reviewing a lawsuit filed against the US government for illegally spying on American citizens has declined to rehear the Al-Haramain case.A federal appeals court is refusing to reconsider its August ruling in which it said the federal government may spy on Americans’ communications without warrants and without fear of being sued.Not only does this mean the plaintiffs will have to take the case to the Supreme Court (if it will hear the case), but it also means the damages awarded ($20,000 each for the two plaintiffs and $2.5 million in legal fees) have been reversed.
The original decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this summer reversed the first and only case that successfully challenged President George W. Bush’s once-secret Terrorist Surveillance Program.
Without comment, the San Francisco-based appeals court announced Wednesday that it would not rehear (.pdf) the case again with a larger panel of 11 judges, effectively setting the stage for a Supreme Court showdown. The appeals court Wednesday also made some minor amendments (.pdf) to its August ruling, but the thrust of it was the same as before.
This also means the Bush's Terrorist Surveillance Plan will continue unchecked as citizens will be unable to bring suits against the government for warrantless spying. The decision rests on a couple of dubious items: a "missing" sovereign immunity waiver and a document mistakenly sent to the plaintiffs that was later designated a "state secret."
The San Francisco-based appeals court had ruled that when Congress wrote the law regulating eavesdropping on Americans and spies, it never waived sovereign immunity in the section prohibiting targeting Americans without warrants. That means Congress did not allow for aggrieved Americans to sue the government, even if their constitutional rights were violated by the United States breaching its own wiretapping laws...Concern about the government's ability to designate nearly anything as a "state secret" in order to prevent the release or use of possibly damning evidence has already been discussed by the Supreme Court during oral arguments in the Clapper v. Amnesty International case. In this case, the belated "state secret" designation effectively limited the plaintiffs to citing circumstantial evidence, which is far less effective than producing an actual document showing that the NSA was doing exactly what the plaintiffs claimed it was.
A lower court judge found in 2010 that two American lawyers’ telephone conversations with their clients in Saudi Arabia were siphoned to the National Security Agency without warrants. The allegations were initially based on a classified document the government accidentally mailed to the former al-Haramain Islamic Foundation lawyers Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor.
The document was later declared a state secret, removed from the long-running lawsuit and has never been made public.
Between the "sovereign immunity" that is unlikely to ever be waived and the ability to designate damning evidence post-facto as "state secrets," the NSA has set itself up with the ability to run a constitutionally dubious, but legally sound, domestic spying program. The system of checks and balances our nation was formed on now more closely resembles a series of erected walls protecting government agencies from being held accountable for their actions.
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Filed Under: immunity, privacy, wiretapping
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Dec. 7
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Whereas, too many people stop us from doing what we want,
It is resolved that no one can sue us anymore.
PS. You can't sue us for this law either.
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Stock up the bomb shelter, were in for a long night.
A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.
George Washington - Purported speech to Congress, January 7, 1790 in the Boston Independent Chronicle, January 14, 1790.
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Just wait until the TSA unveils their taser bracelets. All hell is going to break loose.
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Whattaya complainin' bout? It's perfectly legal!
When gov't officials can "legally" violate the clear intent of the Constitution and all common law since Magna Carta, and without the least twinge of moral conscience, then civilization won't last much longer. The Rich are going for absolute power; they always do.
But cheer up: you'll be able to see truly "free market capitalism" in action, unfettered by laws or regulations!
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Re: Whattaya complainin' bout? It's perfectly legal!
um
no
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Re: Whattaya complainin' bout? It's perfectly legal!
You...rail AGAINST morality in regards to copyright? Since when?
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Re: Whattaya complainin' bout? It's perfectly legal!
Thomas Sowell KICKS YOUR ASS!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkaxekY2Hqg
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Re: Whattaya complainin' bout? It's perfectly legal!
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Re: Whattaya complainin' bout? It's perfectly legal!
For the rest of the week, everyone just ignore his comments and move along.
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Power hungary hypocrites, if they refuse to follow the very simple laws given by the people, i dont see why you should have to follow the laws they continue to pile onto you
Hypocrites
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Now get back to work, Proles.
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We will now check in with Mr. Fox for our daily henhouse count.
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Wolf meet Hen...
Who's to stop the Govt from illegally spying on us?
"William Binney, a former official with the National Security Agency, recently said that domestic surveillance in the U.S. has increased under President Obama, and trillions of phone calls, emails and other messages sent by U.S. citizens have been intercepted by the government."
"In the closing lines of a documentary by Laura Poitas, Binney notes that just because 'we call ourselves a democracy, it doesn’t mean we will stay that way.' The real problem, he says, is that 'people may have nothing to say about it… we haven’t had anything to say so far.'”
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Re: Wolf meet Hen...
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The ability for the government to basically let itself get away with breaking its own laws is a very, very screwed up way of doing things.
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Federal Traitors
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Re: Federal Traitors
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