ACLU HOPES NEW SURVEILLANCE LAW WILL BUG JUDGES INTO ACTION

摘要

The ACLU opened a two-front legal attack on the electronic surveillance measure signed Thursday by President Bush, saying it gives the government "virtually unchecked power" to intercept Americans' phone calls and e-mail. The group sued in U.S. District Court in New York on behalf of human rights, media and other groups alleging that their work will suffer if their communications with people abroad are under constant threat of surveillance. The law allows the government's "mass acquisition" of communications without giving a court details on targets, phone lines or e-mails to monitor or even "prior administrative determinations" of terror connections, said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU national security project. nnThe organization also asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to open to the public any consideration of legal issues with the new enactment. "Frankly no one, not even members of Congress, seems to truly understand how much power this law gives the government or what its key terms mean," ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said. The ACLU wants permission to file briefs and to participate in any oral argument over the law at the FISA court, have the court require the government to file a "public version" of any briefs and have the court's decision itself be made public, she said. Otherwise "we will never even know if the FISA court finds the new law constitutional," she said.