Telecom Immunity Law Challenged In Court

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a constitutional challenge of a law that gave legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush Administration's domestic wiretapping program. The brief filed Thursday in US District Court in San Francisco argues that the FISA Amendments Act denies telecom customers their rights without due process of law, since they're subjected to warrantless surveillance. To get approval for the wiretapping, the government only needs to certify to the court in private that the surveillance is legal or authorized by the president, the EFF said. Attorney General Michael Mukasey filed that classified certification with the court last month. In addition, the fact that only the president has to approve the wiretapping violates the Constitution's separation of powers, since such approval is usually left up to the courts, the EFF argues.