Hurray for the ACLU

They have filed suit to get access to the FISA court orders authorizing the NSA drift netting of Americans' communications data:

The ACLU and Yale Law School's Media Freedom and Information Clinic filed a motion today with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), seeking the release of secret court opinions that permit the government to acquire Americans' phone records en masse. The public has a right to know the legal justification for the government's sweeping surveillance—but, until now, those judicial opinions have remained a heavily guarded secret.

The ACLU filed its motion on the heels of last week's disclosure of an order, issued under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, compelling a Verizon subsidiary to turn over call details for every domestic and international phone call placed on its network during a three-month period. Since then, media reports and statements by members of the congressional intelligence committees have made clear that this order belongs to a much larger surveillance program—covering all the major telephone companies—that has been in existence for the past seven years. When pressed about the program, members of Congress as well as executive officials have emphasized that this mass acquisition of Americans' phone records was reviewed and approved by judges on the FISC.

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The release of these FISC opinions is the first step to an informed public discussion of the surveillance powers asserted by the government. It should not be able to shield such a radical and unprecedented intrusion on Americans' privacy behind a secret court issuing secret legal interpretations of our laws.

I have a sense that they are going to have to fight like hell to get access to the legal opinions, because the filings will almost certainly reveal the low bar presented by the administration, and the low bar accepted by the judiciary, will make a travesty of their protestations of due process.

As Juan Cole pithily notes, "We Misunderstood Barack: He only wanted the Domestic Surveillance to be Made Legal, not to End It.

The idea that you take a blatantly lawless program of nearly unlimited surveillance powers (Bush/Yoo unitary executive), and slap on some due process and retain the same nearly unlimited power, and it's OK, because the Obama administration is a bunch of good people^*, normal checks and balances do not need to apply.

It can all be done in secret, with the approval of a secret court that you have to keep away from toilet paper, because they will sign anything, and the public will never know, and it's all good.

It's why I call him, "the Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever^™."

^*Now that Rahm Emanuel is afflicting the people of Chicago, anyway.