Court says eavesdropping program can continue
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The U.S. government can continue to use its warrantless domestic wiretap program pending the Justice Department's appeal of a federal judge's ruling outlawing the program, a U.S. Appeals Court in Cincinnati ruled on Wednesday.
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A divided federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit Friday challenging President Bush's domestic spying program without ruling on the issue of whether warrantless wiretapping is legal.
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A U.S. Senate committee approved a bipartisan bill to tighten rules on government eavesdropping on terrorism suspects, but a Democratic presidential candidate said on Thursday he would try to block it.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. appeals court has ordered that a lawsuit against the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) for a wiretapping program be dismissed because the plaintiffs haven't been hurt by the agency's actions. A divided three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled Friday that the lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a group of journalists, lawyers and academics, be sent back to a district court judge to be dismissed. In August 2006, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ruled the NSA program, which monitored telephone and Internet communications without court-ordered warrants, was illegal. The appeals court ruled that the plaintiffs didn't prove they'd been affected by the NSA's Terrorist Surveillance Program, authorized by U.S. President George Bush in 2002. The program allowed the NSA to monitor communications between U.S. residents and people in other countries with suspected ties to terrorist group al Qaeda. The plaintiffs argued, among other things, that the program violated the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, protecting U.S. citizens against unreasonable search and seizure. But none of the plaintiffs could prove their Fourth-Amendment rights had been violated, wrote appeals court Judge Alice Batchelder. "The plaintiffs cannot show they have been or will be subject to surveillance personally," Batchelder wrote. The plaintiff's attempts to sue for other reasons, including violation of their First-Amendment, free-speech rights, are a "thinly veiled ruse," the judge added. None of the plaintiffs has shown that their speech has been hindered, she wrote. Neither the ACLU nor the U.S. Department of Justice, which appealed the lower court ruling on behalf of the NSA, were immediately available for comment on the ruling. Judge Ronald Lee Gilman disagreed with the two-judge majority, arguing that the NSA program violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which establishes wiretapping procedures, including warrants. "When faced with the clear wording of FISA ... the conclusion becomes inescapable that [the program] was unlawful," he wrote.
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A secretive White House privacy board says two Bush surveillance programs -- electronic eavesdropping and financial tracking -- do not violate citizens' civil liberties. By the Associated Press.
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Bill grants legal immunity to telecommunications companies that aided government wiretapping.
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Under the guise of reining in the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program, the Senate Judiciary Committee approves a bill that would dramatically expand the government's domestic surveillance capabilities, and usher in a new age of rampant monitoring. By Ryan Singel.
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The U.S. Interior Department can keep its computers connected to the Internet despite the fact that hackers could manipulate royalty payments owed to American Indians for use of their land, an appeals court ruled Friday.
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The justices' decision today is the latest setback in attempts to find out details about the warrantless wiretapping program
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The U.S. Congress has granted a temporary 15-day extension to a controversial law that allows the government to conduct telephone surveillance on suspected terrorists without first obtaining a court warrant.
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A ruling from the European Court of Justice will keep ISPs from being required to reveal subscriber data for use in civil cases. But individual nations, the ruling indicated, can decide to do otherwise.
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A U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday a lawsuit challenging the domestic spying program created by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks must be dismissed, in a decision based on narrow technical grounds.
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The Justice Department asks an appeals court to overturn an Oregon judge's decision allowing a suit over the government's warrantless eavesdropping program to continue. Cheney calls the suit "just plain wrong."
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The White House has conditionally agreed to a court review of its controversial eavesdropping program, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter said Thursday.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let  stand a lower-court ruling that telemarketers' rights to free  speech are not violated by the government's nationwide  do-not-call list.
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CINCINNATI, Oct. 4 -- The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge's ruling that the program is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court panel ruled Wednesday.
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A bill to protect companies from lawsuits for cooperating with the N.S.A. eavesdropping program advanced in the Senate.