http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic...ITICS/609290362

Wiretaps may cease next week

Eavesdropping without warrants will have to end unless court reverses Detroit judge's ruling.

Paul Egan / The Detroit News

A federal judge in Detroit who has ruled President Bush's Terrorist Surveillance Program unconstitutional Thursday gave the federal government one week to get a higher court to say whether the eavesdropping program should be allowed to continue while her ruling is appealed.

Under the ruling by U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, the National Security Agency program, under which wiretaps can be obtained without first getting warrants, would have to cease Thursday, unless the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules otherwise.

Anthony Coppolino, a lawyer with the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., told Taylor on Thursday that stopping the program would be "an extraordinarily dangerous thing to do," because the government depends on the wiretaps to detect terrorist threats by al-Qaida.

Taylor's Aug. 17 ruling marked "the first time in history that foreign intelligence surveillance has been enjoined during a time of war," Coppolino said in court.

"We respectfully ask the court not to override the national security judgment of the president and his senior advisers while the appeal is pending."

But Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said if Taylor lifted the temporary stay on her order it would only mean the president and the government would have to follow the law.

Even without the Terrorist Surveillance Program, the government can obtain unlimited wiretaps outside the United States and can obtain domestic wiretaps without warrants for up to 72 hours under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Beeson said.

"The public interest is served first of all by requiring compliance with the law," Beeson said.

"The government is claiming, hyperbolically in our view, that the injunction would prevent the government from wiretapping suspected terrorists."

Taylor said it is unlikely the government will succeed in its appeal of her ruling that the program violates the First and Fourth amendments to the Constitution. She extended the earlier temporary stay of her Aug. 17 order by one week to give the government time to ask the federal appeals court whether it should grant a stay.