Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Fourth Amendment

Criminal Law

: Fourth Amendment

N.D.Cal.: FISA violated, state secrets privilege no defense

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

An Islamic organization had its telephone calls with its attorneys intercepted allegedly in violation of FISA. The court grants summary judgment against the government defendants for violating FISA, and the state secrets privilege was not shown to apply, at least without a warrant. Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, Inc. v. Obama, 06-cv-01791-VRW (N.D. Cal. March 31, 2010). See discussion on www.eff.org, and its news update: Court Rejects Government's Executive Power Claims and Rules That Warrantless Wiretapping Violated Law: The government's overreaching claim of unbridled executive power finally backfired today in the Al-Haramain case. As the court wrote in its order, "Under defendants' theory, executive branch officials may treat FISA as optional and freely employ the SSP [state secrets privilege] to evade FISA, a statute enacted specifically to rein in and create a judicial check for executive branch abuses of surveillance authority...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on April 01, 2010 (boomark / email).