Jay Stanley writes:
During the Cold War, as I argued last week, the totalitarian governments of the Soviet bloc functioned as a standing warning to Americans of the dangers of unchecked surveillance—lessons that we would do well to remember despite the fall of the Iron Curtain.
As it happens, a coalition of civil liberties organizations from around the world has made a similar point in a very interesting amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court as it prepares to hear arguments two weeks from today in Amnesty et al. v. Clapper, our challenge to the FISA Amendments Act. (That legislation retroactively legalized much of the Bush administration’s unconstitutional warrantless NSA spying program.)
Read more on ACLU.