:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 9.30.2004 ::
:: "U.S.: Secret Search Ruling Appeal Likely" ::
NEW YORK (AP) - The Justice Department will likely appeal a court ruling that declared unconstitutional a Patriot Act provision allowing secret and unchallengeable searches of Internet and telephone records, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday.
In a blow to the Justice Department's post-Sept. 11 powers, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero on Wednesday struck down the provision that let the FBI gather phone and Web customer records but barred service providers from ever disclosing the search took place.
Ashcroft, in the Netherlands to meet with European Union officials, said he would study the decision upon returning to Washington, but "it's almost a certainty it will be appealed."
The decision is the second time a judge has ruled unconstitutional part of the Patriot Act, a package of prosecution and surveillance tools passed shortly after the terrorism of Sept. 11, 2001.
In January, a federal judge in Los Angeles struck down a section of the act that made it a crime to give "expert advice or assistance" to groups designated foreign terrorist organizations. The judge said the language was too vague, threatening First and Fifth Amendment rights.
American Civil Liberties Union attorney Jameel Jaffer called the latest ruling a "landmark victory, and "a wholesale refutation of excessive government secrecy and unchecked executive power."
Read more here.
posted by me
:: 10:02:00 AM [+] ::
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