We Win One, At Least For Now

ACLU:

VICTORY! Court Says Plaintiffs Can Challenge Bush Wiretapping Law

In a huge victory for privacy and the rule of law, a federal appeals court today reinstated our landmark lawsuit challenging the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), a statute that gives the executive branch virtually unchecked power to collect Americans' international e-mails and telephone calls.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of a broad coalition of attorneys and human rights, labor, legal and media organizations whose work requires them to engage in sensitive and sometimes privileged telephone and e-mail communications with colleagues, clients, journalistic sources, witnesses, experts, foreign government officials and victims of human rights abuses located outside the United States.

A federal district court dismissed the case in August 2009, ruling that the plaintiffs did not have the right to challenge the new surveillance law because they could not prove that their own communications had been monitored under it.

But with the support of law professors, the NYC Bar Association, the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press and many others, we appealed that decision to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Today, the appeals court reversed the lower court decision, finding that the plaintiffs have standing to challenge the law even though they cannot show to a certainty that the government is acquiring their communications. According to today's ruling, "the FAA has put the plaintiffs in a lose-lose situation: either they can continue to communicate sensitive information electronically and bear a substantial risk of being monitored under a statute they allege to be unconstitutional, or they can incur financial and professional costs to avoid being monitored. Either way, the FAA directly affects them."

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Follow the link to find links to more details.

Face it: without the ACLU, the rule of law in America would already be stone-cold dead. With the ACLU, that may happen anyway... I am not optimistic... but at least there is one organization whose full-time mission is precisely that: to assure that the government follows the law, particularly those laws that originate in the Bill of Rights.

In my less-than-wealthy state these days, I have dropped all but two of my organization memberships. The ACLU is one of the two that I've kept. Help them out if you can.