Court overturns challenge to warrantless wiretapping

In a ruling delivered on July 6, a federal appeals court overturned an earlier decision by a lower court, which had deemed the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance programs unconstitutional. The reversal helps clear the way for the current administration’s shameful expansion in domestic spying programs.

In a 2-1 vote, a three-judge panel on the Federal Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati ruled that the plaintiffs—a coalition of groups and organizations including the ACLU, The Council on American Muslim Relations, and a host of scholars and activists—did not have sufficient evidence proving they had been targets of the government’s wiretapping program, and therefore, had no legal standing to sue in court.

The majority decision seemingly ignored the obvious difficulty any plaintiff would have in proving that they had been wiretapped, given the secretive nature of the National Security Administration or NSA-led programs. By choosing to rule on the plaintiffs’ legal standing, the court avoided dealing directly with the legality of the domestic spying programs.

The federal appeals court decision vacates the August 2006 ruling by Detroit U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, which had asserted that the NSA’s practice of eavesdropping on telephone and e-mail communications without a warrant violated both the Bill of Rights and the 1978 Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

FISA supposedly mandates judicial oversight of domestic spying programs as a check to the power of the U.S. intelligence agencies. But true to form, the Bush administration, which has flouted countless laws and statutes in its quest to advance its brazen ruling-class agenda, simply ignored the FISA law.

Even after Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s August 2006 ruling, the Bush administration continued the programs unabated while they sought appeal. The July 6 federal appeals court decision simply removes a legal hurdle to programs that have been continually active since September 2001, if not earlier.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt), recently made national headlines for his role in subpoenaing the Bush administration for documents related to the warrantless surveillance programs. In statements released on July 6 after the federal appeals court ruling, many of the plaintiffs expressed their hopes that the Democrat-controlled Congress would apply more pressure on the Bush administration to halt the warrantless surveillance programs.

But, this Congress, which was put in office by a massive anti-Bush/anti-war vote in the November 2006 elections, has already proven beyond a doubt that it is not going to challenge Bush on questions relating to war and repression. The same Democratic politicians that made campaign promises to end the war have continued to give Bush billions of dollars in war appropriations. Any posturing by Democrats in Congress regarding a true halt to Bush’s warrantless surveillance program is empty rhetoric. The Democratic and Republican parties are both representatives of the same ruling-class interests, even if they don’t always agree on just how to do this. That class believes its interests are served by a repressive state apparatus, including surveillance.

The federal appeals court decision to vacate the challenge to Bush’s warrantless surveillance programs is certainly a setback. But it would be a bigger tragedy if the judicial green-lighting of the programs helped to further instill a culture of fear among oppressed populations in the U.S. In the coming months, it is imperative for the anti-war/anti-imperialist movement in the U.S. to take to the streets in greater force, and prove, that despite every tool the ruling class uses to stifle dissent, it is committed to ending the criminal war in Iraq, and putting a stop to imperialist domination across the globe.

It is time to move from protest to resistance. The Encampment and March on the White House which has been called for Sept. 22-29 by the Troops Out Now Coalition is a good place to start.