Court rejects challenge to warrantless wiretaps

[kpete]

Court rejects challenge to warrantless wiretaps

By Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
10:36 AM PST, November 16, 2007
A federal appeals court in San Francisco today handed a major victory to the Bush administration, ruling that a lawsuit challenging the government's warrantless wiretapping program could not go forward because of the "state secrets" privilege.

In a 3-0 decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, which had argued that allowing an Islamic charity's claims that it was illegally spied upon to go forward would threaten national security.

In the opinion, Judge M. Margaret McKeown flatly rejected the government's argument that "the very subject matter of the litigation is a state secret."

However, after reviewing in camera sealed information from the government, McKeown said on behalf of the three-judge panel, "We acknowledge the need to defer to the Executive on matters of foreign and national security and surely cannot legitimately find ourselves second-guessing the Executive in this arena."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wiretap17nov17,0,2799991.story?coll=la-news-alert