The wiretap law is in the middle of controversy again. Amidst greater waves of concern expressed by civil rights activists, the U.S. Supreme Court is now set to consider whether lawyers and civil rights activists have the locus standi to challenge a federal law for government surveillance of phone calls and internet communications. The government has asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the lawsuit brought by ACLU and other plaintiffs including international rights activists, and top journalists.
The plaintiffs filed their case before a New York federal court alleging that 2008 amendments made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act violate the Constitution and allows monitoring and tapping the international communications of Americans unrelated with criminal or terrorist activities. The law protects telecom companies like AT&T, Verizon and others for allowing the government to use their network for improper wiretapping.
The Obama administration, which inducted the questionable amendments in the first place, wants the court to throw out the case, but first make the attempt to throw out the plaintiffs, so that , no one , ever, dares to challenge Big Brother Barrack again. Without addressing the constitutionality of the laws or the issues that have been raised, the government has submitted that civil rights activists do not have the legal standing to challenge wiretapping laws.
The ACLU lawyer, Jameel Jaffer told the media “The constitutionality of the government’s surveillance powers can and should be tested out in court… We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will agree.”
The courts, of course, with their troublesome ways of meddling with the affairs of Big Brother Barrack have pushed the case up to the Supreme Court, without allowing it to get dismissed. The Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York held that the lawsuit could proceed and that U.S. lawyers, activists and journalists have a right cause of concern, because if they were on a phone call where the party at the other end was a target of surveillance the law allowed the government to tap the conversation.
Especially in case of journalists who work on international news and do investigative journalism, as well as lawyers, the law has caused terror. The alternative to a phone call has become a costly and risky operation of travelling to a foreign country to talk face to face with people.
The Justice Department held the appeals court to be lax and lenient in its interpretations which did not suit Big Brother and said that concerns over government surveillance were “completely speculative.”
Does anyone in this country still remember Nixon?
