DETROIT — An attempt to halt the National Security Agency's controversial domestic surveillance program generated intense legal debate Monday before a veteran federal judge, with opponents branding it a threat to American citizens and defenders contending it is legal and essential to national security.
The case is the first major legal challenge to the warrantless wiretapping program, with the Justice Department squaring off against lawyers representing several groups and individuals that seek to have the program declared unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who is expected to be the first to rule on the issue, asked only one question during the hearing and gave no indication of how she would rule or when. It was the second hearing she has held within a month on the complex legal issues surrounding the program.
Taylor has scheduled no further hearings, and told the lawyers she would take the case "under advisement," meaning that she would weigh their arguments and issue a ruling.
After the program was revealed by the New York Times, the government admitted that it had launched a domestic wiretapping initiative after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. NSA personnel listen in on phone calls and obtain e-mails into and out of the U.S. involving suspected terrorist affiliates. The program bypasses the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, created after government spying abuses in the 1970s, that approves search and wiretapping warrants in some intelligence and terrorismrelated investigations.
In January, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Greenpeace and several individuals, who expressed fear that the government was spying on them, filed a lawsuit here challenging the program. The first hearing before Taylor was June 12.
Similar suits are pending in federal courts in New York, Oregon and Texas but have had no major hearings, and Taylor's decision could be influential as other jurists consider the issue.
The ACLU filed the suit in Detroit in part because the area has a large Muslim population. One of the plaintiffs Nazih Hassan, of nearby Ypsilanti, is a member of the Council on AmericanIslamic Relations and has said he fears he has been a target of eavesdropping because he frequently talks with Muslims abroad.
