Editorial: Need limits on spying

A federal judge's ruling last week declaring illegal the Bush-era warrantless surveillance of a now-disbanded Islamic charity is a victory for all Americans' privacy.

In ruling that the former Oregon charity, Al Haramain, and two of its lawyers had been "subjected to unlawful surveillance," U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker in San Francisco reaffirmed a core principle of democracy - that no one is above the law.

Walker became only the second judge to rule on the legality of the National Security Agency's program of eavesdropping without court-approved warrants. The controversial NSA program was launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The judge's decision stands as a stern rebuke to the wildly expansive view of presidential authority held by former President George W. Bush's administration.

Bush contended that there were few, if any, limits on his powers to wage his "war on terror." But the NSA's spying likely swept up the innocent communications of millions of citizens - though the full extent of the spying program may never be known due to secrecy rules.

The Justice Department under both Bush and President Obama invoked state-secrets privileges in the charity surveillance case, contending that scrutiny of NSA snooping would imperil national security.

Such secrecy efforts prevented definitive rulings in a number of other legal challenges to the NSA program. That cover-up - until now - has hampered efforts to repair the nation's global image as a beacon of freedom.

Fortunately, Walsh had more than enough evidence before him to determine that the Islamic charity had been monitored without a warrant by the NSA for a period of more than six months in 2004. Nor is there any reason to believe that his ruling jeopardized ongoing spying efforts, since Obama has pledged that the NSA will act strictly within surveillance laws.

The ruling confirms any commonsense reading of the federal laws on antiterror surveillance. Indeed, Bush should have complied with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which required that he obtain a warrant.

An irony in the Bush end-run around the surveillance rules is that a special FISA court rarely, if ever, denies such warrant requests.

For some, the ruling may seem like a moot point at this juncture. After all, Bush has left office.

However, U.S. antiterrorism surveillance laws were overhauled in 2008 in ways that expanded the government's authority to spy without a warrant, bringing them more in line with the NSA's warrantless program.

But spying on citizens and groups in this country requires a warrant even under the altered FISA rules, although the NSA can operate more loosely overseas.

Since the Obama administration has admitted that the NSA still lapses on occasion into warrantless spying within the United States, the judge's ruling bolsters the case for remaining vigilant about citizens' privacy while safeguarding the nation against another terror plot.