Federal Judge Victor Marrero in New York has struck down portions of the USA Patriot Act, specifically those that allow the FBI to obtain emails and telephone call transcripts from telecommunications providers with self-certified “national security letters” without any court supervision, and particularly with gag orders prohibiting the ISP’s and telecommunications providers from notifying subscribers. The NSL’s would appear to apply to domestic and overseas communications. Not so clear immediately is the role of any secret "FISA" courts.
A typical media story is one by Declan McCullagh, “Judge deals blow to Patriot Act,” at CNET, from Sept. 6, 2007, here. The PDF document for this opinion (at the ACLU website)is here.
The judge found serious problems with violations of the First Amendment, and with the concept of the separation of powers as required in the Constitution. The judge’s ruling did not necessarily apply to other information gathering, such as bank records and credit reports.
A related subject would be the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) with an Electronic Frontier Foundation web reference here.
In the recent COPA trial, search engine companies were subpoenaed to provide search engine results. It would have been possible for the government to track many of these searches back to individual computers or parties, but this sort of request probably would not be invalidated in today’s ruling.
On Friday Sept. 7, 2007, Bill Moyers interviewed attorney Jack Goldsmith, author of The Terror Presidency (from W. W. Norton, 2007), architect of President Bush 's legal strategies since 9/11. Goldsmith presents the days after 9/11 as having constant fear of another major incident. On Sunday Sept. 9 The New York Times Magazine featured a story by Jeffrey Rosen, "Conscience of a Conservative: When Jack Goldsmith took over as the key constitutional adviser for the Bush administration, he soon found himself at odds with the White House," p 40, photographs by Stefan Ruiz.
Eric Lichtblau has a front page story in The New York Times, Sunday Sept. 9, "FBI Data Mining Reached Beyond Initial Targets," mainly about telephone calls, here. This link may require registration or purchase.
Update: Sept. 27, 2007
A federal judge (Ann Aiken) in Portland Or. ruled two provisions of FISA (the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act), as amended by the Patriot Act, as unconstitutional because they allow unsupervised wiretapping in violation of requirements for probably cause. "For over 200 years, this Nation has adhered to the rule of law _ with unparalleled success. A shift to a Nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised..." She wrote that the Attorney General was "asking this court to, in essence, amend the Bill of Rights, by giving it an interpretation that would deprive it of any real meaning. This court declines to do so." The case came up in conjunction with the Madrid train attacks in March 2004.
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