U.S. Supreme Court allows warrantless wiretapping of Americans.

The Supreme Court closed a 6-year-old chapter Tuesday in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s bid to hold the nation’s telecoms liable for allegedly providing the National Security Agency with backdoors to eavesdrop, without warrants, on Americans’ electronic communications in violation of federal law.

The justices, without comment, declined to review a lower court’s December decision (.pdf) dismissing the EFF’s lawsuit challenging the NSA’s warrantless eavesdropping program. At the center of the dispute was 2008 congressional legislation retroactively immunizing the telcos from being sued for cooperating with the government in a program President George W. Bush adopted shortly after the September 2001 terror attacks.

Concerning the widespread internet and phone dragnet surveillance of Americans, both administrations have declared the issue a state secret — one that would undermine national security if exposed.

The case, Hepting v. AT&T, was a class-action suit filed in 2006 by the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of customers. They originally sought billions of dollars in damages by arguing the telecom firms violated both users’ privacy and federal law. However, in the wake of this lawsuit and others like it, Congress passed the retroactive immunity law (FISA AA). The central question in the Hepting case was whether these immunity provisions were constitutional.

In 2011, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed (PDF) the district court's ruling, which confirmed congressional authority to delegate oversight power—allowing the Attorney General to step in and halt private party telecom cases in certain circumstances, such as Hepting. The Ninth Circuit found the US Constitution does not forbid such delegated action.

However, the EFF still has another case pending, Jewel v. NSA, which targets the federal agencies involved as well as the government officials behind them (including President George W. Bush and other members of his administration). The EFF will be filing a motion for summary judgment in Jewel later on Tuesday.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/supreme-court-allows-wiretapping-immunity-law-to-stand/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/scotus-electronic-spying-case/