CINCINNATI, June 15 (UPI) -- The ACLU Friday filed a legal motion to get the U.S. government to release secret materials on the warrantless surveillance program.
"The Justice Department filed the classified materials last Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which is currently reviewing the legality of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program. A federal district court previously ruled that the program is unconstitutional and violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.
"The government wants to ensure that its defense of the NSA's activities is never tested in an adversarial process or made available to the public," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project and the lead attorney in ACLU versus NSA. "But it would be completely improper -- not to mention unprecedented -- for important constitutional issues to be decided on the basis of secret arguments."
The ACLU said the U.S. government had filed secret legal papers with the appeals court three times in the case.
"The government has said almost nothing about the papers' contents but the ACLU said it believes the classified materials pertain to developments in the FISA court," the human rights group said.
The ACLU claimed that the U.S. government was seeking to dismiss the ACLU challenge as moot because the NSA's surveillance activities are now subject to oversight by the FISA court. The ACLU has opposed this effort, however, because the president is still claiming the "inherent authority" to engage in warrantless surveillance, it said.
"The ACLU has noted that nothing would stop the president from resuming illegal surveillance if the case is dismissed," it said.
The continuing legal dispute reflected the ongoing court struggles between the Bush administration and U.S. human rights groups over revealing to the public details of the extent of the warrantless surveillance program.
