Bush Wiretapping found illegal

[Christopher]

Bush's antiterrorist wiretapping has been found illegal (as it should be). But what really bothers me is that government classified documents cannot be used as evidence against the government. We sacrifice national security for international security in essence. Scary stuff

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/31/BANU1CNUF6.DTL

Bush-ordered wiretaps illegal, judge says

(03-31) 13:42 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- The Bush administration wiretapped a U.S.-based Islamic charity under an illegal surveillance program that was not authorized by Congress or the courts, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled today.

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The government inadvertently sent a classified document in 2004 to the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, reportedly showing that two of its lawyers had been wiretapped. Several months after the surveillance began, the government classified Al-Haramain as a terrorist organization, a description its leaders called false.

The now-defunct charity, which was headquartered in Oregon, returned the document at the government's request and could not use it as evidence in a lawsuit it filed over the wiretapping. But Walker said today that Al-Haramain had established, through public statements by officials and nonclassified evidence, that the government had intercepted its calls without obtaining the court warrant required by a 1978 law.

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The ruling was also a rebuff to President Obama. Although Obama had criticized Bush's surveillance program while running for president, Obama's Justice Department argued that courts lacked the power to decide whether the program was legal because any evidence of actual wiretapping was a secret that could not be disclosed without damaging national security.

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Walker's finding of illegal wiretapping could lead to the first ruling by an appellate court on the legality of the surveillance program. A federal judge in Michigan said in 2006 that Bush had exceeded the president's constitutional powers in putting the warrantless wiretapping program in place, but an appeals court overturned the ruling - without deciding the legality of the surveillance effort - because none of the plaintiffs could show that their calls had been intercepted.

The Justice Department declined to say whether it would appeal today's ruling and instead issued a statement focusing on Attorney General Eric Holder's recent restrictions on government claims of secrecy. The new rules require a high-level Justice Department committee to review all such claims, with the attorney general having the last word.

The new policy strikes "an appropriate balance between rebuilding the public's trust in the government's use of this (secrecy) privilege while recognizing the imperative need to protect national security," the department said.