For six years the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) fought a good legal battle to bring the US telecommunications giants to justice for allegedly providing backdoors to their networks allowing the US National Security Agency (NSA) to warrantlessly wiretap the nations’ electronic communications. In 2008 the US Congress retroactively immunized the telecommunications companies from being prosecuted under the program.
Last December, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit summarily dismissed (.pdf; 287KB) the EFF lawsuit challenging the NSA’s warrantless wiretap program initiated by the George W. Bush administration and continued under Barack Obama. On 9 October, the US Supreme Court declined to review the case without comment and with Justice Samuel Alito not participating in the decision.
Both administrations have refused to admit or deny the existence of the program first reported by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau for the New York Times in December 2005. Both administrations have steadfastly maintained the matter is protected as a state secret and exposure to be a threat to national security.
Maddeningly, multiple statutes dating from the 1970s Church Committee investigation (pdf; 72.5KB) provide for both criminal and civil liability for US telecommunications carriers that enable warrantless surveillance of their customers. Those laws were put in place when the US government illegally spied on dissidents. Furthermore, Mark Klein a former AT&T employee, described to Ellen Nakashima, writing for the Washington Post, how AT&T had built a wiring closet with the sole purpose of providing the NSA to unrestricted access to all electronic communications traversing its network.
While the US Supremes declined to review the EFF’s case against the telecommunications companies, the EFF’s legal action against the US government in the matter continues.
Meanwhile, President Obama is actually running for re-election on his civil liberties record. Conor Friedersdorf, writing for the Atlantic, reports Obama made the following claim at a fundraising event at the Los Angeles Ritz-Carlton on 7 October (emphasis added):
“We haven’t talked about what’s at stake with respect to the Supreme Court. We haven’t talked about what’s at stake with respect to civil liberties. And obviously there’s a lot at stake internationally. And an opponent who calls me ending the war in Iraq “tragic,” or suggests that somehow we should stay longer in Afghanistan has a very different world view, different perspective.
“And so the question now is, how hard are we willing to fight for the vision that we profess? How hard am I willing to fight for it, but it’s not just me in this thing — how hard are you guys willing to fight for it?”
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For the last 12 years -- and into the foreseeable
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US Supreme Court declines to review warrantless wiretapping dismissal was originally published by ARTS & FARCES internet on Tuesday, 16 October 2012 at 12:20 PM CDT. Copyright © ARTS & FARCES LLC. All rights reserved. | ISSN: 1535-8119 | OCLC: 48219498 | Digital fingerprint: 974a89ee1284e6e92dd256bbfbef3751 (64.237.45.114)
