Federal Gov’t: We can wiretap US citizens without a warrant & you can’t sue

The federal government is sticking to its guns and claiming that some violations of your rights are so super-secret that the government can’t be sued for them. Specifically, if government agents listened in on your communications without a warrant, say federal lawyers, you shouldn’t be allowed to seek redress in the courts bcause the U.S. government is protected against legal action by sovereign immunity. Even better, Congress is poised to reauthorize a law which explicitly legalizes such official intrusion.

Reports Wired: “A federal appeals court appeared troubled Friday by the Obama administration’s arguments that the government could break domestic spying laws without fear of being sued — and that the government’s argument might be correct, due to an oversight by Congress.  A two-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard an hour of oral arguments here by the government and a lawyer for two attorneys whom a federal judge concluded had been wiretapped illegally without warrants by the government.”

Note that the courts have already found the wiretapping in question to be illegal. The argument is whether the federal government can be held accountable for its actions. The federal government says “no.”

With all of this talk of secrecy and national security in place, the court win was a miracle of official incompetence. It came about only because the feds accidentally mailed two attorneys a classified document revealing that their conversations had been wiretapped. Such warrantless wiretaps were illegal at the time, but were later permitted by a 2008 amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act supported by, among others, then-Senator Barack Obama.

That amendment is up for reauthorization right now.

Read more at Reason.com HERE.