Supreme Court Won't Hear Case On Legality Of Retroactive Immunity For Telcos

from the another-brick-in-the-wall dept

Well, this is unfortunate. Late last year, the 9th Circuit appeals court -- as part of a series of cases concerning warrantless spying on Americans -- decided that the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) passed by Congress in 2008 was not unconstitutional in granting telcos retroactive immunity for carrying out government orders to spy on Americans. This is quite troubling for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the government is more or less admitting that it teamed up with telcos to violate the law. Why else would you grant retroactive immunity to telcos if you didn't know they'd already broken the law in the past.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Supreme Court has now refused to hear the appeal on the case, effectively killing off the EFF and ACLU's legal challenge to the legality of giving telcos retroactive immunity.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, immunity, retroactive immunity, supreme court, telcos, warrantless wiretaps