Briefs

rcrnews, Heather Forsgren Weaver, Aug 18, 2006.

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge in Detroit Thursday issued a ruling to halt the National Security Agency's warrantless-wiretapping program. However, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor said the American Civil Liberties Union could not sue to stop a separate program -- the data mining of telecommunications records -- because to do so would force the disclosure of secret information.

The NSA is "permanently enjoined from directly or indirectly utilizing the TSP (Terrorist Surveillance Program, the official name of the NSA's warrantless-wiretapping program) in any way, but not limited to, conducting warrantless wiretaps of telephone and Internet communications, in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It is further ordered and declared that the TSP violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution, FISA and the wiretap statute," wrote Taylor.

...

[While siding with the ACLU on the surveillance issue, Taylor dismissed a separate claim by the group over NSA data-mining of phone records . Editor]

While Taylor found that sufficient details of the TSP were in the public domain for the ACLU to bring suit and for DoJ to defend the program without revealing state secrets, the same, she said, is not true for the data mining of telecommunications records as reported by USA Today.

"ACLU cannot establish a prima facie case to support their data-mining claims without the use of privileged information and further litigation of this issue would force the disclosure of the very thing the privilege is designed to protect,� wrote Taylor.

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