Appeals court sends back wiretap case

APPEALS COURT SENDS BACK WIRETAP CASE
[SOURCE: InfoWorld, AUTHOR: Stephen Lawson]
A U.S. appeals court in San Francisco left a sealed document out of a case about alleged illegal surveillance by the federal government, but said the subject of the case itself is not secret because the government has discussed the program. In the case of Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Bush, an Islamic charity sued the government, alleging it illegally spied on the group. The case is one of several involving an alleged warrantless surveillance program launched by the Bush administration in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. An appeal in another such case, Hepting v. AT&T, was heard alongside the Al-Haramain case on Aug. 15, but the two were separated Friday when the court released its opinion. The three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit sent the case back to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to determine whether a law that regulates wiretapping without a warrant, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), overshadows the state secrets privilege the government wants to use. If the lower court decides it does, then a court might be able to look at the secret document behind closed doors and determine whether the wiretapping was illegal, said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/11/20/Appeals-court-sends-back-wiret...