DETROIT: A federal judge in the U.S. nullified president George Bush's domestic wiretap program intended to protect Americans from terrorism. The judge said the warrantless surveillance program violated people's rights to free speech and privacy.
U.S. district judge Anna Diggs Taylor of Detroit is the first judge to rule on the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program, which the Bush administration claimed is the key component in fighting terrorism.
She said the wiretaps under the five-year-old program violated freedom of speech, protections against unreasonable searches and a constitutional check on the power of the presidency.
In a scathing 44-page ruling, the judge said, "There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution."
"Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution,'' she wrote in the ruling.
She added, "It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
"The three separate branches of government were developed as a check and balance for one another.''
The NSA's program has been widely criticized by civil rights activists and has raised concern among lawmakers, including some from the Republican Party. The president had authorized the program to be implemented after the 11 September attacks and it became public last year.
The administration has appealed against the ruling. Both sides agreed the program could go on until the judge hears the administration's plea for a stay pending appeal.
Under the surveillance program, the government assumes powers to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens without having to secure a proper court warrant, if these wiretaps are intended to track suspected al Qaeda operatives.
A justice department statement had called the program an early warning system to detect and prevent a terrorist attack. Some security officials underscored the need for such a program in the wake of the terrorist plans unearthed in Britain to blow up aircraft flying to the U.S.
Taylor in her ruling said the administration had violated the terms of both the Fourth Amendment and a 1978 law by skirting a requirement that warrants be issued by a special secret court for eavesdropping on individuals or suspects in the country. She, however, sided with the government on its contention that arguments in open court about the NSA's "data mining" of phone records would jeopardize national security and rejected the challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had filed the suit, to that part of the surveillance program.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of several professionals like journalists and attorneys, who have to interact with their clients in the Middle East, and felt interceptions in the communications could jeopardize their cases.
Administration officials said they would fight it out in the courts to have the ruling overturned as they felt it would weaken the country's defenses. Attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales said, "We have confidence in the lawfulness of this program. That's why the appeal has been lodged."
Another suit of the same nature filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights is pending in federal court in New York.
On 20 July U.S. chief district judge in San Francisco Vaughn Walker had given a judgement allowing a privacy-rights group to sue AT&T, on behalf of its customers, for allegedly collaborating in the surveillance program by allowing the government to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mails.
A federal court panel has subsequently transferred dozens of similar lawsuits against telecommunications companies nationwide to Walker's court, rejecting requests by the companies and the government to send the cases to a judge in Washington, D.C.
