nytimes: Justice Dept. Denounces Secret Court on Wiretaps
Via How Appealing, the US DoJ has filed a supplemental brief in its appeal to the FISA review court over wiretapping powers.
In papers filed on Wednesday with the court of review and made public late Thursday, the Justice Department said that the ruling last May raised "significant constitutional questions" and that the wiretap court was "attempting to impose rules for the operation of the executive branch and structure the functions of different units within the executive branch." "Even if federal courts had some power to micromanage the executive branch, separation of powers prohibits the use of that power to the extent it interferes with core functions of the executive," the department said. [...] The barriers were established years ago in an effort to prevent criminal investigators from sidestepping the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches by using the foreign-surveillance laws as the basis for conducting wiretaps of criminal suspects. The standard of evidence required to open a foreign-surveillance wiretap is generally much lower than it is in common criminal cases. - NY Times, Justice Dept. Denounces Secret Court on Wiretaps.