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H06854

Headlines : Civil Liberties

Summary:

The surveillance court has rejected just five of the nearly 19,000 requests for warrants it has received since 1979 and the warrants can be applied retroactively, meaning that the administration can begin a domestic spy operation and take up to 15 days to file a warrant request with the court.

*Also See: Bush’s Secret Surveillance State:* The NSA spying program is especially egregious, given that the administration circumvented the already lower standards for surveillance set forth by FISA and unleashed an arm of the military to spy on Americans’ communications. But it is only the newest blunt tool of the secretive surveillance state to come to light.

NSA Just One of Many Federal Agencies Spying on Americans.

[Posted By ShiftShapers]

By Jason Leopold
Republished from t r u t h o u t

Bush says he has the legal authority to authorize the National Security Agency to continue eavesdropping on citizens and monitoring emails without judicial oversight.

The Bush administration was publicly admonished by a senate committee, and a special surveillance court, in two separate instances for repeatedly trying to skirt the law in obtaining top-secret warrants to spy on American citizens suspected of having ties to terrorists. Despite the public rebuke, President Bush circumvented the judicial process and secretly authorized the National Security Agency to spy on thousands of individuals in the United States in defiance of the very court that issued a legal opinion saying the administration was already infringing on civil liberties in other domestic spy cases.

Securing top-secret surveillance warrants from a special court after 9/11 was proving to be hugely problematic for the Justice Department, and led a senate committee to issue an extraordinary report more than two years ago criticizing federal law enforcement officials for failing to properly follow routine guidelines in their efforts to obtain warrants for eavesdropping on Americans suspected of having ties to terrorists.

The Senate Judiciary Committee report issued in February 2003 may help explain why President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to spy on Americans without seeking prior approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which for more than two decades has handled domestic spying activities.

The report…

[end excerpt]

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Posted by ShiftShapers
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