So, how do you prove you’re being spied on when the people spying on you are trying to be all sekrit about it? Good question, though when the whole spying program is illegal to begin with… Chicken, meet egg. A great writeup about a piece of disturbing news from friday by Ryan Singel at Wired — don’t miss the wrapup at the end (re: “the more than 50 lawsuits pending in a San Francisco District Court against the nation’s telecoms”). Snippy:
A federal appeals court threw out a ruling that the government’s warrant-free spy program was unconstitutional Friday, finding that the ACLU’s plaintiffs had no standing to bring suit against the National Security Agency program since they couldn’t prove they were spied upon.
That program, revealed in December 2005 by the New York Times, eavesdropped on certain emails and phone calls that involved Americans on American soil conversing internationally with persons the government said it had some reason to suspect had ties to terrorism.
The Administration ran the program, dubbed the Terrorist Surveillance Program, outside the purview of the secret court set up to watch over foreign intelligence wiretaps that involve Americans or happen on U.S. soil, an end run that many civil libertarians called illegal. The Administration says the president’s wartime powers allow him to wiretap anyone unilaterally.
Link.
Classic catch22