From Homeland Security News Wire:
A first: Constitutionality of NSA warrantless surveillance challenged by terrorism suspect
30 January 2014
Jamshid Muhtorov, a refugee from Uzbekistan now facing terrorism charges in Colorado, is the first criminal defendant who, as part of his lawyers’ defense strategy, is challenging the constitutionality of the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program. Muhtorov filed a motion Wednesday in federal court in Denver to suppress any evidence obtained through the agency’s surveillance program on grounds that it was unlawful. In July 2013 the Justice Department reversed an earlier policy, and now informs defendants whether the case against them, in whole or in part, is based on information obtained through warrantless surveillance. To date, six months after the review process at Justice was launched, Muhtorov and Mohamed Mohamud, a Portland, Oregon teenager who had been convicted after an FBI sting operation of attempting to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony, are the only defendants to receive such a disclosure.
“Mr. Muhtorov believes that the government’s surveillance of him was unlawful for the simple fact that it was carried out . . . under a statute that fails to comply with the Fourth Amendment’s most basic requirements” that the government obtain a warrant and that the monitoring be reasonable, his attorneys said in a 55-page document....
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