Wiretap suits press on in the wake of FISA amendments

The class-action lawsuits against telecoms accused of unlawfully participating in NSA surveillance without a court order were back before a federal judge Friday, for the first time since Congress voted to offer retroactive amnesty to the complicit firms. Long stalled before the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the consolidated suits against the telecoms were finally punted back to district judge Vaughn Walker last month, following passage of the FISA Amendments Act. The legislation requires that any civil action against a telecom be thrown out if the Attorney General certifies that the firm received a written directive authorizing their cooperation with the National Security Agency's secretive surveillance program. That would appear to put an end to the long legal battle, but as Friday's hearing before Walker made clear, attorneys for both sides have a few moves left to play. Attorneys for the Electronic Frontier Foundation had hoped to immediately challenge the constitutionality of the immunity provision of the FISA Amendments Act. While it remains to be seen what approach EFF will take, some legal scholars have argued that retroactively voiding a vested legal claim runs afoul of the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause, which bars the government from depriving people of property without just compensation.