terrorist surveillance program has been found guilty of illegally eavesdropping on two american lawyers and an islamic charity. the third story a ruling from a federal court in san francisco that could be the most significant in unraveling the invasions of privacy institutionalized by president bush. the law was filed by the saudi branch of islamic foundation and two american lawyers. the plaintiffs claim the phone conversations in 2004 were illegally wiretapped by the national agency nsa while it was deemed a support of terrorism by the treasury department. they argue that fisa because they did not first obtain a warrant. justice department under both bush and obama deemed it was not necessary saying the states secret privilege trumped the fisa law.
but this one was targeted against the nsa, against the government rather than the telecommunications companies and by declaring this illegal, it raises questions in my mind about whether individual government officials in the future could be held liable for having acted in a criminal way. is there any reason to suppose ultimately this case will turn out differently the last time there was an attempt made to sue the nsa by the aclu? in that case, in detroit, as you may remember, the whole program was declared unconstitutional. and an appeals court ruled that it was that it was blocked. but no one challenged the ruling by the judge that it was unconstitutional. and it s unclear anybody can argue in this case either that by declaring it criminal that the program was a crime that you could not make a further you know, demand a further criminal investigation of what the bush administration did.
court s ruling. the bush people were trying to ignore whatever the court said in this case if they were not in office. the obama people are not going to abide by it. the question is they may not appeal this case, this ruling, which would leave on the books the idea that the nsa program is illegal. does it also the way they defended this, the way holder defended this, using state secrets, would that stay on the books too. would this be the last time they use state secrets? probably not. they defended that more vigorously than they have the nsa program. they like that and something they can use in other cases. it raises real questions about state secrets too. it limits the state secrets and how far they can push that and shut down criminal cases against the government. great putting this in context for us. thanks for your time tonight. thank you. the fake implication by
right to invade fisa, it raises serious questions about the whole underpinnings of the bush war on terror. you can argue that virtually all of the programs that the bush administration used, rendition, torture, wiretapping, you know, setting up secret prisons all were innocent in one form or another the invasion of congressional power. and by saying the bush administration had no right to avoid the congressional mandates and congressional legislation, that raises real questions about everything that the bush administration did on counterterrorism was illegal. practically, does that mean anything at this point? i think it raises the interesting question right here, this was a last major lawsuit pending on the nsa program. all of the cases against the telecommunications companies have been thrown out by the telekom immunity. in 2008, in the legislation to update fisa that president obama voted for it was in the senate.
it s unclear whether the obama administration really wants to fight that battle. they ve argued this more narrowly on the states secrets privilege and never tried to defend the bush administration on the actual nsa program. they did something interesting here with the context that may be different. the holbrooke justice department broke with the gonzalez justice department and gave this of why it should be dismissed and the judge ruled in favor of the plaintiff. does that tell us how flawed for historical purposes, does it tell us how flawed the spying program was? it raises real questions because there was a document that they had been given by mistake that they revealed they had been wiretapped under this program. they were not allowed to use that. but the obama administration the way they broke with the bush administration on this is saying that we re going to abide by the