"Giant Step Toward Fascism"

That lawsuit I mentioned the ACLU was planning in the wake of the FISA bill (now law.. pardon me while I cringe) has been made official.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a landmark lawsuit today to stop the government from conducting surveillance under a new wiretapping law that gives the Bush administration virtually unchecked power to intercept Americans' international e-mails and telephone calls. The case was filed on behalf of a broad coalition of attorneys and human rights, labor, legal and media organizations whose ability to perform their work - which relies on confidential communications - will be greatly compromised by the new law.

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, passed by Congress on Wednesday and signed by President Bush today, not only legalizes the secret warrantless surveillance program the president approved in late 2001, it gives the government new spying powers, including the power to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans' international communications.

"Spying on Americans without warrants or judicial approval is an abuse of government power - and that's exactly what this law allows. The ACLU will not sit by and let this evisceration of the Fourth Amendment go unchallenged," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "Electronic surveillance must be conducted in a constitutional manner that affords the greatest possible protection for individual privacy and free speech rights. The new wiretapping law fails to provide fundamental safeguards that the Constitution unambiguously requires."

In today's legal challenge, the ACLU argues that the new spying law violates Americans' rights to free speech and privacy under the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution. The new law permits the government to conduct intrusive surveillance without ever telling a court who it intends to spy on, what phone lines and email addresses it intends to monitor, where its surveillance targets are located, why it's conducting the surveillance or whether it suspects any party to the communication of wrongdoing.

Among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is journalist Chris Hedges, who today doesn't hold back at all in explaining this new law:

During a conference call Thursday, Hedges recounted his work in foreign countries like the former Yugoslavia and El Salvador where his phone was bugged and government agents regularly followed him to prevent critics from speaking out. Now the same thing is beginning to happen here, he said.

"I have little doubt the passing of this FISA law essentially brings that type of surveillance system and the effectiveness of that system to the United States," he said.

According to the ACLU, the Democratic-controlled Congress has handed Bush a gift-wrapped grant of new domestic spying authority. The group says its lawsuit is perhaps the last chance to sustain Americans' confidence that a government snoop isn't listening in on every one of their international calls.

"This lawsuit is the ACLU at its best," said journalist and author Naomi Klein, another plaintiff in the suit. "It's defending the law even when the lawmakers won't." [...]

Hedges didn't know for sure that he was being monitored, but he couldn't say for sure that he wasn't. The chilling effect of surveillance he had become so familiar with while reporting in foreign countries had now scuttled his work at home.

"With that gone we take a giant step toward fascism," Hedges said during the call.

Absolutely. And yet the Establishment just wants to bury the bodies and move on. Kudos to the ACLU for at least trying to halt this maddening descent.

The 23,000-plus supporters of Barack Obama who pleaded with him - organizing through his own website - to get FISA right, to no avail, have not quit fighting either. Get FISA Right is their new home, and their mission is to hold those who voted accountable and push a progressive agenda on a future President Obama. This self-starting organizing group is going to be a powerful asset moving forward.

I don't like taking a crapshoot on a conservative judiciary to hold the tenuous strings of the 4th Amendment together, but those who are fighting for our Constitutional rights should be praised.