Judge Finds NSA Program Unconstitutional

Ann Beeson, the American Civil Liberties Union's associate legal director and the lead attorney for the plaintiffs challenging the government's wiretapping policy, addresses the media in Detroit, in this June 12, 2006, file photo. A federal judge ruled Thursday, Aug. 17, 2006 that the government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File) (Carlos Osorio - AP)

"It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights," she wrote. "The three separate branches of government were developed as a check and balance for one another."

Administration officials said the program is essential to national security. The Justice Department said it "is lawful and protects civil liberties."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said eliminating it would put the nation in a "very, very weakened position."

"Without programs that allow us to do surveillance of communications and transactions in real time ... it will be as if in the Cold War we had dropped all the radar," he said in Los Angeles.

In Washington, Republicans expressed hope that the decision would be overturned, while many Democrats praised the ruling.

"It is disappointing that a judge would take it upon herself to disarm America during a time of war," Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the decision shows the executive branch needs more external reviews.

"The administration is wrongly convinced that it can run the country without Congress or oversight. This is their tragic failure, and the courts understand it," Rockefeller said.

ACLU executive director Anthony Romero called Taylor's opinion "another nail in the coffin in the Bush administration's legal strategy in the war on terror."

"At its core, today's ruling addresses the abuse of presidential power and reaffirms the system of checks and balances that's necessary to our democracy," he told reporters.

One of the plaintiffs in the case, Detroit immigration attorney Noel Saleh, said the NSA program had made it difficult to represent his clients, some of whom the government accuses of terrorist connections.

Saleh, a leader in Michigan's large Arab-American community, also said he believes many conversations between people in the community and relatives in Lebanon were monitored in recent weeks as people here sought news of their families amid the violence in the Middle East.