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The Bust Administration gets another court spanking as a federal judge rules the Feds’ warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional
From the first moment the stories of the government’s domestic wiretapping broke program, one of the few inevitables was that the ACLU would file a lawsuit. And sue they did, on behalf of various lawyers, journalists and scholars, arguing that the program violated folks’ constitutional rights. The feds, for their part, tried to argue that the whole thing is within the Executive’s inherent authority, although they couldn’t actually prove this without providing information that would reveal valuable state secrets.
Well earlier today the federal judge hearing this case, District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, rejected this state secrets privilege and sided with the ACLU. Taylor ruled that the wiretap program violates all sorts of laws and Constitutional rights including “the Separation of Powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Title III (of the Constitution).” She also issued an injunction, ordering an immediate cessation of the program.
Unsurprisingly, the DOJ has already indicated its intention to appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals because it considers the program “a critical tool that ensures we have in place an early warning system to detect and prevent a terrorist attack.”
