[JURIST] The Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation on Wednesday filed a request for partial summary judgment [FRCP 56 text] concluding that the National Security Agency (NSA) illegally wiretapped several conversations between the charity and its lawyers. The organization is suing the government for the wiretapping and is seeking both disclosure of what was intercepted and monetary damages. Al-Haramain argues that there is “no genuine issue of material fact” as to whether the NSA recorded their conversations in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), unless the government can produce evidence of a classified warrant to do so. The motion also rejects the government’s claim that FISA is an unconstitutional intrusion on executive authority, arguing that the law overrides that authority:
If the Executive Branch were free to ignore FISA in the name of national security, then the Executive Branch would also be free, at its unfettered discretion, to ignore a judgment by this Court of defendants’ liability for violating FISA. That would not bode well for the future of the constitutional separation of powers, for it would concentrate too much power in the President.
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