Low Graphics Site
 
 
 
 
 
 
|
|
|
|
January 18, 2006
|
Wednesday
|
Zilhaj 17, 1426
|
Wiretapping by US govt challenged
By Our Correspondent
NEW YORK, Jan 17: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Tuesday announced that it has joined a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a secret National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program that targeted American citizens without court authorization.
The bipartisan lawsuit, filed in Detroit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), alleges that the NSA surveillance program violates the First and Fourth Amendments to the constitution and the constitutional separation of powers because it was authorized by President Bush in violation of his executive authority. It also seeks a court order to bring the program to an end.
Both groups are seeking to have the courts order an immediate end to the program, which the groups say is illegal and unconstitutional. Officials close to the Bush administration said the Justice Department would probably oppose the lawsuits on national security grounds.
The New York times reported that the Justice Department officials would not comment on any specific individuals who might have been singled out under the National Security Agency program, and they said the department would review the lawsuits once they were filed.
The lawsuits seek to answer one of the major questions surrounding the eavesdropping program: has it been used solely to single out international phone calls and e-mail messages of people with known links to Al Qaeda, as President Bush and his most senior advisers have maintained, or has it been abused in ways that civil rights advocates say could hark back to the political spying abuses of the 1960s and 70s?
“There’s almost a feeling of deja vu with this program,” James Bamford, an author and journalist who is one of five individual plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit who say they suspect that the program may have been used to monitor their international communications.
“It’s a return to the bad old days of the NSA,” Mr Bamford told the New York Times. He has written two books on the intelligence agency.
|
