It'd be nice to think that this will amount to something in the end, but I just don't really think it will. Sadly.
A federal judge has rejected the Bush administration's justification for warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists and ruled that federal agents had eavesdropped illegally on a U.S.-based Islamic charity.
The ruling Wednesday by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco focused on the surveillance of a single organization, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation - the only plaintiff in dozens of wiretapping lawsuits around the nation that had evidence its calls were intercepted.
But Walker's reasoning struck at the heart of the program President George W. Bush authorized after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, allowing agents to intercept phone calls and e-mails between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists without a warrant.
