judge vaughn walker

A federal district court judge in California yesterday dismissed a slew of lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies that allegedly helped the U.S. government engage in warrantless wiretapping.
Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco dismissed the cases because Congress explicitly gave the telecom companies immunity from civil suits in a 2008 amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance [...]

While most of us were still reading or recovering from the latest batch of gruesome torture memos released by the Justice Department last week, bmaz at Emptywheel learned and reported that U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker issued his ruling in the al-Haramain warrantless wiretapping case.  In his order, Judge Walker rejects the government’s latest [...]

A heated confrontation is brewing between the Obama administration and the federal judiciary.