Warrantless spying fight
The continuously expanding Surveillance State in the United States is easily one of the most consequential and under-discussed political developments. And few are doing more to ensure it continues than top-level Obama national security officials. - Perhaps worst of all, the Obama administration is aggressively seeking to block any efforts to have federal courts rule on the constitutionality of [the] new FISA law. Immediately after its 2008 passage, the ACLU, on behalf of journalists, activists, and writers, sued to invalidate the law on the ground that it violates the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans by subjecting them to warrantless eavesdropping. As they always do in such cases, the Bush and Obama DOJs demanded dismissal of the suit on the ground of “standing”: namely, they asserted the definitively Kafkaesque claim that because the list of Americans who have their conversations intercepted is kept secret, the plaintiffs cannot prove they were eavesdropped on under the law, and thus lack “standing” to challenge it.