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Defending Liberty & the Law in 2006

December marks the first anniversary of the revelations about the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping of Americans in the US. The Center was the first to note that the program is illegal. In the year since the story broke, the White House has continued to refuse to disclose to Congress the full extent of its secret surveillance of Americans in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was passed in 1978 and modified by the Patriot Act.

White House officials christened the program the “terrorist surveillance program,” even though FISA is the approved program for surveillance of suspected terrorists in the US, including emergency wiretaps as long as court approval is later sought. To date, the administration has refused to seek judicial warrants for the wiretaps it has been conducting under this program. Instead, the White House sought legislation to do away with individualized judicial checks. The Center’s advice and communications were essential to resisting these proposals to legalize secret warrantless eavesdropping on Americans.

The Center has devoted substantial time to protecting the human rights of detainees, imprisoned in Guantanamo and elsewhere, to have an opportunity to challenge the basis for, and conditions, of that detention. Since the historic Supreme Court rulings rejecting the administration’s detention policies, the Center has worked to limit who may be designated an “enemy combatant,” and end the administration’s kidnapping of individuals who are not on a battlefield, to be transferred to secret prisons for torture or interrogation techniques in violation of US laws, and held indefinitely without charge. This fall, Congress amended the law regarding interrogation but failed to ensure the right to challenge indefinite detention.

Also, the Center continued to work closely with the Rights Working Group (RWG) to lay a foundation for challenging unfair immigration enforcement that violates civil liberties and human rights. With the Center’s advice and assistance, RWG launched its “Liberty and Justice for All” campaign and opposed unconstitutional immigration policies proposed or implemented this past year. We continue to challenge the detention without charge of individuals arrested in the United States.

The Center also worked successfully to increase oversight powers in the flawed Patriot Act reauthorization bill that survived a three-month bipartisan filibuster as well as securing new oversight of datamining by the administration.