September 27, 2007

Portions of PATRIOT Act Unconstitutional

Two provisions of the PATRIOT Act have been declared unconstitutional by Federal district court judge Ann Aiken. 27b-6 has the details, but basically Aiken ruled that the secret spying court cannot issue orders for domestic wiretaps, as it would be a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Law enforcement must get a warrant, as has always been the case before. The secret spy court is used by the Executive Branch to get permission to acquire foreign intelligence. But the Bush administration has been using it to get permission to acquire domestic intelligence, under the excuse that they might acquire "foreign-ish" intelligence at the same time.

Posted by josuah at September 27, 2007 8:38 PM UTC+00:00