Stuck On Stupid

Crossposted with Stop The ACLU

ACLU Disappointed: FISA Court Denies Access to Wiretap Records

[1] Via the ACLU:

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a request for the documents with the FISC in August following passage of the Protect America Act, a law that vastly expands the Bush administration’s authority to conduct warrantless wiretapping of Americans’ international phone calls and e-mails. In attempting to justify passage of the law, the president and members of Congress publicly made repeated veiled references to orders issued by the FISC earlier this year.

Today the FISC ruled that, despite the fact that release of the orders would inform the public about the government’s surveillance powers, the court would not conduct a review to determine whether the legal rulings were properly determined to be classified.

The following can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project:

“The decision is disappointing, both in its reasoning and its result. A federal court’s interpretation of federal law should not be kept secret from the American public. The Bush administration is seeking expanded surveillance powers from Congress because of the rulings issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court earlier this year. Under this decision, those rulings may remain secret forever.”

[2] More…

Writing for the court, U.S. District Judge John Bates refused:

‘The identification of targets and methods of surveillance would permit adversaries to evade surveillance, conceal their activities, and possibly mislead investigators through false information,’ Bates said.

Of course this common sense approach of avoiding the revelation of our “secret” methods of listening in on terrorist activity disppoints the ACLU. Their history of looking out for the “rights” of our enemies during war time is [3] long and documented. Thank goodness common sense triumphed over the ACLU’s dangerous agenda this time around. Since it was the ACLU whining that everything should go through this court for approval, this should shut them up. Don’t count on it.

[4] Jason Javitz:

It’s good to see that someone over in D.C. has a functioning cerebrum, eh?

P.S. - Judge Bates was nominated to the federal bench — yeah, you guessed it — by President George W. Bush.