July 03, 2008

Islamic Charity Loses Wiretapping Case

Judge throws out Islamic charity's lawsuit alleging they were illegally being wiretapped. Maybe. And they might have been harmed. Maybe.

STACLU has this:

A federal judge in San Francisco dismissed a lawsuit Wednesday that sought to prove President Bush acted illegally in 2001 when he ordered the wiretapping of phone calls between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists without court approval.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker said an Islamic charity on the government’s terrorist list could not use a crucial classified document - an accidentally released memo indicating the charity and its lawyers had been wiretapped - to show that it had been harmed by the surveillance program and thus had the right to challenge it in court. But the organization’s lawyer said he wasn’t giving up.

I always love it when activists sue over some alleged harm to them, but find that they can only articulate the harm in the most general terms. Was the harm here that they were being wiretapped (because it was believed they were diverting funds to terrorists) or that they knew they were being wiretapped?

I'm actually sitting at the Phoenix airport but I thought I forward a few stories while I had some time. Thank God for free wi-fi!


By Rusty at July 3, 2008 10:58 AM | | l digg this