'Surveillance records release set for next week '

[in_cog_ni_to]

Surveillance records release set for next week
Department of Justice concedes it can begin to release internal warrantless surveillance records on March 3


Tuesday, February 21, 2006
by The National Security Archive




Under pressure from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Justice Department on February 10 conceded in federal court that it could begin releasing as early as March 3 the internal legal memos relied on by the Bush administration in setting up the controversial National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping program.
The National Security Archive, along with the American Civil Liberties Union ("ACLU"), this week joined the Electronic Privacy Information Center in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice seeking to compel the immediate disclosure of the internal legal justifications for the surveillance program. The filing by the Archive and the ACLU was consolidated with a suit filed on January 19, 2006, by the Electronic Privacy Information Center ("EPIC") that requested the federal court in Washington to issue a preliminary injunction requiring the release of relevant documents within 20 days-which Judge Henry H. Kennedy, Jr. considered at a formal hearing today.

The response of the news media to the revelation that the National Security Agency ("NSA") has engaged in warrantless domestic surveillance was immediate and dramatic, as was the response of Congress which just this week held the first hearing examining the legality of the program. News reporting and Administration statements over the last six weeks have disclosed that NSA began warrantless eavesdropping prior to receiving formal approval from President Bush; that the operation involves cooperation from American telecommunication companies, which allowed the agency to tap "directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries"; that the information gathered was turned over to other agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency; and that some purely domestic communications (which both originated and terminated in the United States) were accidentally intercepted.

The Archive's General Counsel Meredith Fuchs commented, "There are real secrets and convenient secrets. It may be convenient for the NSA to run this program in secret, but that policy debate, and consideration of the legality of the program, should be open."<snip>

More here: http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=33&idsub=134&id=2644

[Greeby]

1. I'll be watching

:popcorn:

[wtmusic]

2. Don't hold your breath

They have strung out the release of the Darby Abu Ghraib photographs for 6 months now, under a similar order.

[in_cog_ni_to]

5. Or IF they DO release them, they will redact all the important info

and all we'll have are thousands of BLACK pages.:eyes:

[Callalily]

3. I'm taking a

wait and see attitude on this one. Is my skepticism showing? :sarcasm:

[Richard Steele]

4. I'm not holding my breath.

How many times were they ORDERED
to release all the Abu Ghraib photos and videos?
They never even APPEALED the last order,
they simply IGNORED it.

If we see ANY of this new info at all,
it will be a few cherry-picked files
chosen to support B*sh's criminal BS.

Rove will probably just order an assload
of blank NSA stationery, and
an infinite number of monkeys...

[Doctor_J]

6. This will be an interesting data point in the march to fascism

The Rove admin has been getting more and more brash about admitting to their crimes, and letting hate radio, the press, and cabal "news" sell it to the American people. We already know that * was spying on Christiane Amanpour, a Quaker anti-war meeting, and the ACLU. Will they redact most of the really egregious stuff, or will they admit to broad spying on political enemies, and use their media sheild to protect them? Stay tuned. If this one flies, the next step will probably be naked violence against their enemies, right out in the open. What more do we need, exactly, to categorize this as impeachable?