Complicity

by anonymous Wed Dec 21, 2005 11:38

["A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of U.S. President George W. Bush's authorisation of a domestic spying program, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. Citing two sources, the newspaper reported U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as FISA, sent his resignation to Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday. The Post said the resignation letter gave no explanation for Robertson stepping down. Robertson declined comment when reached on Tuesday, the newspaper said. Robertson is considered a liberal judge who has often ruled against the Bush administration's assertions of broad powers in the terrorism fight, the Post said.
Revelation that authorised domestic spying on Americans suspected of terrorists links without court approval spurred considerable debate among federal judges, including some on the FISA Court, The Washington Post said.
The Post said Robertson indicated privately to colleagues in recent conversations that he was concerned that information gained from warrantless National Security Agency surveillance could have then been used to obtain FISA warrants. FISA court Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who had been briefed on the NSA spying program, raised the same concern in 2004 and insisted that the Justice Department certify in writing that it was not occurring, the Post said.

"They just don't know if the product of wiretaps were used for FISA warrants -- to kind of cleanse the information," one source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, was quoted as saying.

Robertson was appointed to the federal bench in Washington by President Bill Clinton in 1994. He was later selected by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist to serve on the FISA court, the Post said."]

C/P Reuters.

by redjade Wed Dec 21, 2005 11:55

im working on creating a blog in the 'other press' section on this. its a massive story - very hard to collate the essentials + the stary seems to evolve by the miniute.

should be up in a few hours

by hmmmm (iosaf) Wed Dec 21, 2005 12:23

Just to remind everyone, that traditionally the US citizen has been protected from intrusive surveillance by a few agencies including the NSA. But of course being the US they still wanted to spy on their own citizens. & accordingly came up with quite a novel solution : They facilitated their allies. Generally the British have carried the responsibility for spying on Americans, just as the Americans have done their fair share of spying on Britons. A key example of all this was Blair's admission of MI6 spying on the offices of Kofi Annan in the UN in the lead upto his statement on WMD in Iraq in winter 2002.

Of course Mr blair was doing a lot of spying in 2002.