HERE'S WHERE FISA REALLY NEEDS AMENDING

There's a Catch-22 in the most recent court ruling about illegal wiretapping: the plaintiffs can't use the transcripts they were inadvertently provided. Without the transcripts, it will be very difficult to prove that they were in fact spied on and thus have standing to sue. THIS is a change that should be made.

As Glenn Greenwald puts it:

For procedural reasons, the court yesterday ruled that plaintiffs -- in order to obtain a ruling as to whether the Bush administration broke the law -- must be able to show that they were subject to warrantless surveillance without using the accidentally produced transcripts, something that will be very difficult to do. Congress has refused to pass legislation to fix this Kafkaesque, Catch-22 trap -- whereby the President illegally spies in total secrecy, with no oversight, thus preventing anyone from being able to prove they were subjected to the illegal spying and thus preventing anyone from having "standing" to challenge the legality of the spying in court.