Salon.com > Warrantless Wiretapping

New York terror suspect case could challenge NSA spying

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:06:00 +0000

In a case that may provide the first defendant to challenge the constitutionality of warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, federal authorities are refusing to confirm whether such surveillance techniques were used to foil a New York terror plot. Brothers Raees Alam Qazi, 20, and Sheheryar Alam Qazi, 30, are accused of plotting to blow up a high-profile target in New York. Defense attorneys claim the feds are attempting to avoid a situation in which the constitutionality of the NSA's surveillance methods would be scrutinized.

Wire reported Monday:

The government has never publicly conceded it has used evidence in a criminal case obtained through the National Security Agency’s post-9/11 mass surveillance program. A single acknowledgment could open the floodgates to challenge the surveillance tactic, which Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in February noted that “commonsense” (.pdf) tells us is being employed by federal investigators.

The terrorism case concerns brothers Raees Alam Qazi, 20, and Sheheryar Alam Qazi, 30. Among other things, prosecutors said the younger Pakistani-born brother surfed Al-Qaida internet sites to learn how to build a bomb. The FBI recorded telephone calls linking him to a plot to blow up a New York landmark last year.

... Magistrate [John] O’Sullivan, agreeing with a defense motion, ordered (.pdf) prosecutors last week to say whether the government first acquired evidence against the indicted brothers (.pdf) using the Bush-style surveillance, and then used that evidence to obtain the traditional warrant from the secret court.

The path the authorities chose is relevant for a host of reasons.

Among them, the government has never publicly admitted in a prosecution that it employed warrantless surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act. Doing so likely would trigger legal challenges over whether the tactic is constitutional — and would threaten the Qazi brothers’ case and perhaps countless others.

“This could open the door again at the Supreme Court,” said Patrick Toomey, national security fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Julian Assange: The government is a vindictive loser

Thu, 09 May 2013 17:01:00 +0000

London—A tiny tip of the vast subterranean network of governmental and intelligence agencies from around the world dedicated to destroying WikiLeaks and arresting its founder, Julian Assange, appears outside the red-brick building on Hans Crescent Street that houses the Ecuadorean Embassy. Assange, the world’s best-known political refugee, has been in the embassy since he was offered sanctuary there last June. British police in black Kevlar vests are perched night and day on the steps leading up to the building, and others wait in the lobby directly in front of the embassy door. An officer stands on the corner of a side street facing the iconic department store Harrods, half a block away on Brompton Road. Another officer peers out the window of a neighboring building a few feet from Assange’s bedroom at the back of the embassy. Police sit round-the-clock in a communications van topped with an array of antennas that presumably captures all electronic forms of communication from Assange’s ground-floor suite.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), or Scotland Yard, said the estimated cost of surrounding the Ecuadorean Embassy from June 19, 2012, when Assange entered the building, until Jan. 31, 2013, is the equivalent of $4.5 million.

SCOTUS rejects challenge to surveillance law

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:43:00 +0000

The Supreme Court has rejected a legal challenge from civil liberties advocates and journalists over the government's sprawling surveillance dragnet codified in 2008 legislation. The case, Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, challenged the 2008 federal law that authorized the government's interception of international communications involving Americans.

The justices voted 5-4 that the plaintiffs, including journalist Chris Hedges and Amnesty International, lacked standing in the case -- arguing, essentially, that concerns about a legal framework that might allow for future surveillance were insufficient evidence of harm caused by the law. “They cannot manufacture standing by incurring costs in anticipation of non-imminent harms," wrote Justice Samuel Alito in the majority decision.

The plaintiffs had sought a First Amendment challenge against the FISA Amendments Act -- a law that retroactively legalized the government's warrantless wiretapping program, which had "begun in secret and without congressional authorization under the Bush administration," as HuffPo's Matt Sledge noted. The law permitted the National Security Agency and other agencies to read emails and listen in to calls without a warrant when they are targeting foreign nationals.

5 ways Obama is just like George W. Bush

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:22:00 +0000

On President Barack Obama's second full day in the Oval Office in 2009, he signed important executive orders that signaled a clear break with the excesses of George W. Bush's “war on terror.” Obama decreed that the Guantanamo Bay prison camp would be closed in a year and that the United States would no longer perpetrate torture. No longer would men, some of them innocent, languish without charges in what has been described as an American gulag by Amnesty International. No longer would men be subjected to brutal interrogation tactics that clearly amounted to torture, like water boarding.

The orders would “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism,” said Obama.