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back to article Warrantless wiretap opponents lose brace of court cases

Opponents of the Bush administration's controversial warrantless wiretapping program have suffered a pair of defeats in their efforts to rein in the scheme. In a 2-1 decision, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals last week dismissed a legal challenge to the warrantless surveillance program brought by the American Civil Liberties …

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  1. Steve

    Is it just me ?

    "The practice of so-called warrantless wiretapping came to light after the New York Times reported in December 2005 "

    And what, exactly, did the good burghers of the USA think the NSA were doing *before* that ?

    Is there seriously anyone in the US who honestly believed that the NSA was only ever spying on foreign interests and foreign nationals ?

    I mean come one, you don't need an organisation that large just to nobble a few puny French aerospace deals.

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  2. florian mosleh

    phone number = URL ?

    while i can, to some extent, agree that there is a definite similarity between a phone number and a domain, it seems to me that http://domain.com/titleofdocument.html has a much more detailed information payload than 555-1234. I think this is another instance of inflexible cold-war-era laws being applied to technologies that are too complex for a good fit.

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  3. Will Leamon

    US Burghers

    Aren't that good. In fact they'll kill you pretty quick.

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  4. Chris

    Ummm...

    "The plaintiffs said their concerns were well founded but the Wisconsin appeal court dismissed the case because none of the plaintiffs knew for sure whether or not their communications had been placed under surveillance."

    Isn't that the issue? That no one knows how the wiretaps are being used? It wouldn't be very secret if the targets knew they were being tapped! I can tell you I'm glad I got out of the US and live in Canada now.

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  5. TBushmaker

    NSA Official Denial

    We were not listening.

    You cannot not prove we were listening.

    You are boring. We are not listening.

    You now have a reason why we are not listening.

    We will accept reasons to listen.

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  6. Tony

    A small clarification

    Leyden writes: "...to intercept communications *inside* the US as part of the "War on Terror"."

    John omits that the other end of these communications is *outside* the US with suspected bad guys.

    Keep it real, John.

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