The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and several other groups filed a lawsuit to counter a law allowing the U.S. government to intercept the phone calls and e-mail messages of people with suspected ties to terrorism.
The ACLU is opposing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act.
As approved by the Senate on Wednesday, the law allows the U.S. National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance of a wide range of people "reasonably believed" to be outside the U.S. The law also will likely require a U.S. court to dismiss more than 40 lawsuits that have been filed against telecommunication carriers that allegedly participated in the NSA program before there was court oversight of the surveillance.
The FISA Amendments Act still allows broad, un-targeted surveillance, including spying on U.S. residents who are talking with people overseas, said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project.
The law allows the "massive acquisition of U.S. citizens' and residents' international communications," Jaffer added. "It permits the government to conduct intrusive surveillance without ever telling the court who it intends to surveil, what phone lines or e-mail it intends to monitor, where the surveillance targets are located, or why it is conducting the surveillance."
The new law violates the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the government from unreasonable searches and seizures, the ACLU said.
Author and journalist Chris Hedges, former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times, stated that the FISA Amendments Act will make it difficult for journalists, especially those who report on overseas issues, to do their jobs. The difficulty is in determining whether journalists, since they are reasonably outside the U.S., are subject to surveillance. The new law impacts negatively on the First Amendment because Congress is not to prohibit the freedom of the press.
Hedges raised questions on whether the law will negatively effect the voices of "whistle-blowers, human-rights activists, dissidents, true-tellers and people with a conscience to rise up and speak against the audacity of those in power."
In 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit threw out a similar lawsuit against the surveillance program brought by the ACLU because they didn't have standing to sue the government in that they couldn't demonstrate they were targeted by the secret program.
Amendment IV states:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The new law abrogates the citizen's rights to be secure in the person and their papers. Its a bad law that has not been proven to be effective in thwarting terrorism.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." -- Benjamin Franklin
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