Re: FISA Court Rules Wiretapping Program Legal

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
Date: January 16, 2009 12:00:57 AM EST
To: dave () farber net
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] FISA Court Rules Wiretapping Program Legal

This is puzzling, but perhaps only to those of us who know that there  
is not just *one* NSA "wiretapping program" that has been  
controversial from a Constitutional point of view during the last 8-10  
years.  Bamford's "The Shadow Factory" discusses several, for example,  
and there are three or four others rumored.

In specific, what is puzzling is the claim that an appeal of a  
specific FISA ruling can fully cover the wide variety of broad- 
spectrum collection, archiving, analysis, and distribution systems  
that are now feasible, but cannot be narrowly targeted as to personal,  
temporal or geographic scope.  Appeals courts do not "make law".

David Farber wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
> Date: January 15, 2009 8:46:34 AM EST
> To: Undisclosed-recipients: <>;
> Cc: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: FISA Court Rules Wiretapping Program Legal
>
> January 16, 2009
> Intelligence Court Rules Wiretapping Program Legal
> By ERIC LICHTBLAU
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/washington/16fisa.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
>
> WASHINGTON — A federal intelligence court, in a rare public opinion,  
> is expected to issue a major ruling validating the power of the  
> president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and  
> intercept e-mail messages without a court order, even when  
> Americans’ private communications may be involved.
>
> The court decision is expected to be disclosed as early as Thursday  
> in an unclassified, redacted form. It was made in December by the  
> Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which has issued  
> only two prior rulings in its 30-year history.
>
> The decision marks the first time since the disclosure of the  
> National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program three  
> years ago that an appellate court has addressed the  
> constitutionality of the federal government’s wiretapping powers. In  
> validating the government’s wide authority to collect foreign  
> intelligence, it may offer legal credence to the Bush  
> administration’s repeated assertions that the president has  
> constitutional authority to act without specific court approval in  
> ordering national security eavesdropping.
>
> The appeals court is expected to uphold a secret ruling issued last  
> year by the intelligence court that it oversees, known as the  
> Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, or FISA, court. In that initial  
> opinion, the secret court found that Congress had acted within its  
> authority in August of 2007 when it passed a hotly debated law known  
> as the Protect America Act, which gave the executive branch broad  
> power to eavesdrop on international communications, according to  
> someone familiar with the ruling.
>
> snip
>
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