Wired
Despite Hurricane Sandy, the Supreme Court on Monday entertained oral
arguments on whether it should halt a legal challenge to a once-secret
warrantless surveillance program targeting Americans’ communications, a
program that Congress eventually legalized in 2008.
The hearing marked the first time the Supreme Court has reviewed any case touching on the eavesdropping program
that was secretly employed by the President George W. Bush
administration in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, and
largely codified into law years later.
Just three weeks ago that the Supreme Court closed a six-year-old
chapter in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s bid to hold the nation’s
telecoms liable for allegedly providing the National Security Agency
with backdoors to eavesdrop, without warrants, on Americans’ electronic
communications in violation of federal law. The justices, without comment, declined to review a lower court’s December decision dismissing
the EFF’s lawsuit. At the center of the dispute was legislation
retroactively immunizing the telcos from being sued for cooperating with
the government in Bush’s warrantless spy program.
Fast forward to Monday, and the court took the historic step of
hearing a post-September 11 spying case. Judging by the high court’s
deference to Congress in general and how it killed the EFF spy case
weeks ago, we likely already know the outcome of this highly complex
issue now before the justices: Warrantless spying is expected to
continue unabated for years, and possibly forever.-[Full Article]
