Terrorism suspect challenges warrantless surveillance
Source: Washington Post
A Colorado man facing terrorism charges became on Wednesday the first criminal defendant to challenge the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s warrantless-surveillance program.
Jamshid Muhtorov, a refugee from Uzbekistan, filed a motion in federal court in Denver to suppress any evidence obtained from the surveillance on grounds that it was unlawful.
“Mr. Muhtorov believes that the government’s surveillance of him was unlawful for the simple fact that it was carried out .?.?. under a statute that fails to comply with the Fourth Amendment’s most basic requirements” that the government obtain a warrant and that the monitoring be reasonable, his attorneys said in a 55-page document.
Muhtorov’s case is likely to be the first in which a court weighs the constitutionality of a law that has stoked controversy since it was passed in 2008 as a revision to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The issue ultimately could be decided by the Supreme Court.
Read more: http://washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/terrorism-suspect-challenges-warrantless-surveillance/2014/01/29/fb9cc2ae-88f1-11e3-a5bd-844629433ba3_story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
are we gonna hear that she is a traitor?
from the article,,
Muhtorov’s attorneys cited a 2011 ruling, declassified by Clapper last year, that showed concern by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court about a government pattern of “substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program.” In the case of Section 702, the court found that the NSA had been using the law to collect e-mails that were not related to the targeted address and that the “volume and nature of the information” was “fundamentally different from what the Court had been led to believe.”
“We’ve learned over the last few months that the NSA has implemented the law in the broadest possible way, and that the rules that supposedly protect the privacy of innocent people are weak and riddled with exceptions,” ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement. “Surveillance conducted under this statute is unconstitutional, and the fruits of this surveillance must be suppressed.”
Muhtorov’s challenge has its roots in the case rejected by the Supreme Court last year. In deciding to dismiss, the Supreme Court relied upon the assurance by the U.S. solicitor general that the government would notify criminal defendants when it had used evidence from the surveillance.
But the solicitor general at the time did not know that the Justice Department had a policy to conceal such evidence from defendants. He learned of it only after some criminal defendants sought clarification of remarks that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) made in late 2012 that the government had used evidence from warrantless monitoring in certain cases. The department reversed its policy last year.
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and the solicitor general did not know the justice department had a policy of concealing evidence??unreal
