While Nancy Pelosi and the other members of the House leadership continue to spout stupidity about their horrendous, unconstitutional, unforgiveable FISA votes, the ACLU is trying to protect the Consitution and the America people's right to privacy.

 

However, the Bushite administraton, like Pelosi and crew trying to cover for their rending of the Fourth Amendment, are making Alice in Wonderland statements in order to maintain illegal secrecy and maintain a lawless surveillance state in this country.

 

From Wired via Cursor.org:  "The Bush Administration told a secret spying court Wednesday that it should not allow the ACLU to participate in the court's review of new blanket surveillance programs that sweep in milions of emails and phone calls that cross the border, arguing the matter is too sensitive for outsiders.

"Under the new spying law passed by Congress in early July, the government may order Google or AT&T or AOL, to turn over every email, phone call or IM that enter or leave the country (with just a few caveats).

"For nearly 30 years, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act largely banned such blanket surveillance being done inside the United States, requiring instead that the government get individualized court warrants.

"But the government does have to explain to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court how the vacuum cleaner doesn't suck up communications that are known to be from Americans to Americans or purely domestic communications.

"The ACLU wants to be there when that happens.

"On July 10, the ACLU asked the secret court to let it participate when the Court was considering questions about the "scope, meaning and constitutionality" of this blanket surveillance program. The ACLU wanted to make the government file public versions of its legal briefs, allow the ACLU to file a brief and argue orally, and that the court issue public opinions (with classified info redacted). The ACLU made the request (.pdf) the same day it challenged the constitutionality of the newly passed FISA Amendments Act in federal district court.

"The Bush Administration argues that the court's review of spying orders is far too secret to allow any outside party.

" 'The benefits of open proceedings are greatly outweighed by the potential harm that public access would cause to the national security and integrity of the FISC process,' the brief (.pdf) argued. 'Allowing third parties to use this Court as a general forum to present facial challenges to the Government's surveillance activities could cause a flood of litigation that would distract this Court from its important national security functions.'

"Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU's National Security Project counters that openness is necessary, since the July passage of the FISA Amendments Act means the court will be ruling on the constitutionality of new, broad and powerful surveillance powers.

" 'If the government’s request is granted, the court won't hear arguments from anyone except the government and those arguments will be presented to the court in secret briefs,' Jaffer said.  'At the end of the process, the court will issue a ruling that is also secret. The process the government is proposing is completely unacceptable.' "

And Democratic leadership and other Democratic members of Congress abrogated their constitutional oaths and aided and abetted Bush and the telecom's spying on Americans by trampling on the Fourth Amendment.