Tag: NSA surveillance (page 2)

The New York Times today reports that the Albany terror trial of Yassin M. Aref may have the best chance of challenging the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

TalkLeft has been writing about Mr. Aref's case since its inception in 2004 (see here) and about its NSA wiretapping connection since Aref's lawyer, Terry Kindlon, filed his first challenge to the program. Aref's case was the Ashcroft-initiated prosecution of the pizza man and the Iman.

From Terry's initial motion:

"The government engaged in illegal electronic surveillance of thousands of U.S. persons, including Yassin Aref, then instigated a sting operation to attempt to entrap Mr. Aref into supporting a nonexistent terrorist plot, then dared to claim that the illegal NSA operation was justified because it was the only way to catch Mr. Aref," Kindlon's motion said.

The Judge denied the motion in a secret ruling. Terry then went to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals asking it to compel the District Court to direct the government to come clean about the role warrantless wiretaps played in its case. He got no relief.

The Government used the "Doogie Howser" of terrorism experts at trial and Aref and his codefendant were convicted. Even though Aref's sentencing guidelines were 30 years to life, the Judge sentenced him to 15 years. Even the Judge didn't believe Aref was motivated by a desire to help terrorists.

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Marty Lederman points out the problem with this statement of National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell to the El Paso Times:

There's a claim of reverse targeting. Now what that means is we would target somebody in a foreign country who is calling into the United States and our intent is to not go after the bad guy, but to listen to somebody in the United States. That's not legal, it's, it would be a breach of the Fourth Amendment. You can go to jail for that sort of thing. And If a foreign bad guy is calling into the United States, if there's a need to have a warrant, for the person in the United States, you just get a warrant. And so if a terrorist calls in and it's another terrorist, I think the American public would want us to do surveillance of that U.S. person in this case. So we would just get a warrant and do that. It's a manageable thing. On the U.S. persons side it's 100 or less. And then the foreign side, it's in the thousands. Now there's a sense that we're doing massive data mining. In fact, what we're doing is surgical. A telephone number is surgical. So, if you know what number, you can select it out. So that's, we've got a lot of territory to make up with people believing that we're doing things we're not doing. (my emphasis)

Marty correctly, in my view, points out: More...