The Am erican Civil Liberties Union filed suit in Manhattan federal court after Bush signed the spy bill, calling the law a violation of constitutional speech and privacy protections.

President George W. Bush signed a law overhauling the rules for eavesdropping on terrorism suspects but immediately met a civil liberties challenge calling it a threat to Americans’ privacy.
“This law will protect the liberties of our citizens while maintaining the vital flow of intelligence,“ Bush said at a White House ceremony on Thursday to mark a rare legislative victory for the president during his last year in office.
The bill authorizes US intelligence agencies to eavesdrop without court approval on foreign targets believed to be outside the United States.
Bush quickly signed the bill a day after Congress gave it final approval, with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama dropping earlier opposition to vote for passage.
Obama’s Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, has supported the bill but was absent for Wednesday’s vote.
Bush said the 9/11 attack “changed our country forever“ and taught the intelligence community that it must know who America’s enemies are talking to and what they are saying.
“In the aftermath of 9/11,“ Bush said, “few would have imagined that we would be standing here seven years later without another attack on American soil. The fact that the terrorists have failed to strike our shores again does not mean that our enemies have given up.“

Abuse of Power
The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in Manhattan federal court as Bush signed the measure and called for the law to be voided as a violation of constitutional speech and privacy protections, according to Reuters.
“Spying on Americans without warrants or judicial approval is an abuse of government power, and that’s exactly what this law allows,“ ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in announcing the suit.
The action was filed on behalf of human-rights groups, journalists, labor organizations and others who say they fear the law will allow the US government to monitor their activities, including compiling of critical reports on the United States.
The administration says the measure will allow it to swiftly track terrorists. But the suit charges the law permits warrantless surveillance of phone calls and e-mails of US citizens who may have legal and legitimate reasons for contacting people targeted by government spying.

No Connection to Terrorism
“The new law gives the government the power to conduct dragnet surveillance that has no connection to terrorism or criminal activity of any kind,“ said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, in a conference call to reporters.
“A law like this is fundamentally inconsistent with the Constitution and with the most basic democratic values,“ he said.
Roger Atwood, communications director for the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights organization for the region, said the new law will impede the group’s work.
“The mere suspicion that information provided to us, to our staff, will be accessed by the US government can seriously affect WOLA’s credibility and our effectiveness in Latin America in moving our work forward,“ Atwood said in the conference call.

Malaysia’s prime minister has pledged to retire in 2010, but the two-year wait may not satisfy some dissidents clamoring for a quick cleanup at the top after an election debacle, analysts and party members said on Friday.
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced Thursday an agreement to hand over power to his deputy, Najib Razak, by mid-2010.
According to AP, he had hoped to placate dissidents unhappy with his leadership, under which the ruling National Front coalition suffered its worst election outcome in March 8 polls.
“I am a bit disappointed. We wanted him to expedite the power transition. Two years is too long,“ said Puad Zarkashi, a prominent member of Abdullah’s United Malays National Organization. June 2009 would have been a more appropriate date for his resignation, he said.
Puad said he has received calls from constituents in the southern state of Johor and party leaders in other states expressing unhappiness with Abdullah’s decision.
The decision “is but a sole voice amid many other voices,“ said Tricia Yeoh, a political analyst. “It is possible that instead of uniting the party he may be alienating segments of the party who do not necessarily want to wait two years.“

Indian Kashmir was put under federal rule on Friday following the collapse of the state government over a land row that prompted more than a week of rioting in the Muslim region, officials said.
India’s only Muslim-majority region was thrown into crisis when chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned Monday after a key political ally withdrew support, protesting the allocation of land to a Hindu pilgrim trust, AFP reported.
The order was revoked by Azad, a member of the Congress party which leads the embattled federal government, but only after violent street protests that lasted more than a week, in which six people were killed and hundreds injured.
Kashmir state’s governor, N.N. Vohra, “issued a proclamation on Thursday evening and assumed, with immediate effect, all the functions of the government of the state,“ an official statement said. It is the third time the scenic Himalayan region will be directly ruled by New Delhi since an Islamic insurgency, which has left at least 43,000 people dead, broke out 18 years ago.
Vohra, New Delhi’s top representative in the region, also dissolved the state assembly, the statement said, making him the administrator of the troubled region.

Zimbabwe warned the UN Security Council on Thursday that the sanctions it is considering could push the African nation toward civil war.
Zimbabwe’s UN mission also said in a letter to the council that the punitive measures proposed by the US and Britain against President Robert Mugabe’s government could turn Zimbabwe into another Somalia, a Horn of Africa nation where warring factions have clashed for the past 17 years.
According to AP, the letter said the sanctions would lead to the removal of Zimbabwe’s “effective government and, most probably, start a civil war.“
The mission blamed Britain and the US, claiming they’re obsessed with regime change and are “determined to ignore real, entrenched, fundamental and enduring issues that lie at the heart of Zimbabwe’s internal politics.“
Western powers are pushing for a vote this week on an arms embargo and financial freeze on Mugabe and top officials in his government in response to Mugabe’s violence-marred re-election. The US and France say they have the nine votes that are required for the 15-nation council to pass the resolution.

Georgia recalled its ambassador to Russia for consultations after the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that a Russian military aircraft had flown over a breakaway, pro-Moscow region of Georgia this week. The flight, and Georgia’s response, further escalated tensions between Russia and Georgia, a former Soviet republic, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital.
According to “New York Times“, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had received a warning this week from Russian peacekeeping forces in the breakaway region, South Ossetia, that Georgia was considering sending in forces to rescue four of its servicemen held by separatists. Russia said the flight was conducted to observe the situation and to send a message that “dampened the zeal of hotheads in Tbilisi.“
In other news, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday Georgian membership of NATO will harm the ex-Soviet state’s chances of resolving conflicts with its breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
“We are aware that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was speaking about Georgia’s affiliation to the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) and that this step would settle the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia,“ Lavrov was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying at a meeting with Abkhaz leader Sergei Bagapsh.