Lawsuit targets use of warrantless NSA wiretaps in criminal prosecutions

[unhappycamper]

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nsa-americans-20140407,0,629951.story



Peter Swire, a privacy law expert who served on the presidential task force on NSA surveillance, said, "They shouldn't be holding information about U.S. persons unrelated to an investigation."

Lawsuit targets use of warrantless NSA wiretaps in criminal prosecutions
By Ken Dilanian
April 6, 2014, 5:55 p.m.

WASHINGTON — When federal prosecutors charged Colorado resident Jamshid Muhtorov in 2012 with providing support to a terrorist organization in his native Uzbekistan, court records suggested the FBI had secretly tapped his phones and read his emails.

But it wasn't just the FBI. The Justice Department acknowledged in October that the National Security Agency had gathered evidence against Muhtorov under a 2008 law that authorizes foreign intelligence surveillance without warrants, much of it on the Internet. His lawyers have not been permitted to see the classified evidence.

In January, Muhtorov became the first defendant to challenge the constitutionality of that law, which allows the NSA to vacuum up phone and email conversations involving Americans as long as one end of the communication is abroad.

Civil liberties activists hope the case, and other court challenges in Illinois, Oregon and New York, will focus judicial scrutiny on whether the government can use the results of foreign intelligence gathering in domestic criminal prosecutions. Domestic wiretaps require a court order specifically for the person targeted; overseas wiretaps do not.