Contact: Nisha N. Mohammed, The Rutherford Institute,  434-978-3888, ext. 604, 434-466-6168, cell, nisah@rutherford.org

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 /Standard Newswire/ -- Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law have filed a joint amicus brief before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, asking the court to declare unconstitutional the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA), a law that gives the government virtually unchecked authority to intercept Americans' international e-mails and telephone calls. The amicus brief was filed on behalf of a broad coalition of attorneys and human rights, labor, legal and media organizations whose ability to perform their work, which relies on confidential communications, are compromised by the law. The attorneys argue that the FAA fails to provide adequate protections for U.S. persons' Fourth Amendment rights. A copy of the amicus brief is available here.

"The FAA dramatically expands the government's authority to spy on Americans without a warrant," said John W. Whitehead. "All Americans should be justifiably concerned about the dangers posed to privacy and other constitutional liberties by this new law, especially as it relates to national security policy and the use of new information technologies."

Signed into law by President Bush on July 10, 2008, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA) not only legalizes the warrantless surveillance program that the president approved in late 2001, it gives the government new spying powers, including the power to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans' international communications. The FAA permits the government to conduct intrusive surveillance without telling a court who it intends to spy on, what phone lines and e-mail addresses it intends to monitor, where its surveillance targets are located, why it's conducting the surveillance or whether it suspects any party to the communication of wrongdoing.

As the amicus brief filed by attorneys for The Rutherford Institute and the Brennan Center points out, the FAA's spying authorization differs from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's in two important--and legally significant--ways. First, the FAA does not require the government to identify with any specificity either the target or the particular communications it aims to intercept. Second, under the FAA, the government need not indicate that the target(s) are suspected of any activity harmful to the U.S. in order to carry out surveillance. Furthermore, attorneys argue that "minimization procedures"--the procedures the government uses to try to protect information about U.S. persons collected through surveillance--do not provide adequate privacy protections to satisfy the Fourth Amendment given broad and relatively unchecked surveillance power authorized in the new FISA law.