Group challenging enhanced surveillance law faces uphill climb - washingtonpost

A group of lawyers, human rights activists and journalists argued in a federal appeals court on Friday that a 2008 update to U.S. surveillance law has made their e-mails and phone calls more susceptible to government interception and that, as a result, they are forgoing conversations and flying overseas rather than making phone calls or writing e-mails.

In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which ensured that Americans' communications would not be tapped in the course of intelligence investigations without a warrant. The law came in response to a string of abuses by government intelligence agents in the 1960s and 1970s that included spying on civil rights and antiwar activists.

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