"A US judge has ordered the FBI to stop its "pervasive" use of National Security letters to snoop on phone and email records, ruling Friday that the widespread tactic was unconstitutional. The order issued by US District Court Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco came as a blow to a measure heavily used by the administration of President Barack Obama in the name of battling terrorism " globalpost
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"Garland rejected an effort by the Obama administration to keep secret any aspect of the C.I.A.’s interest in the use of drone strikes to kill terrorism suspects abroad. It does not necessarily mean the contents of any of those records will ever be made public, and it stopped short of ordering the government to acknowledge publicly that the C.I.A. actually uses drones to carry out “targeted killings” against specific terrorism suspects or groups of unknown people who appear to be militants in places like tribal Pakistan. The Obama administration continues to treat that fact as a classified secret, though it has been widely reported." NY Times
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There has been a consistent pattern in which federal judges have been willing to uncritically accept the Executive Branch's arguments with regarding to classification issues regarding evidence.
It often seems that any argument at all from the Justice Department will suffice in most courts. This different. pl
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130315/fbi-snooping-tactic-ruled-unconstitutional
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/us/court-says-cia-must-yield-some-data-on-drones.html?_r=0
