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A federal judge ruled Thursday that the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping program is unconstitutional.

But the Justice Department, citing the program's importance as an early warning system, has already announced that it plans to appeal this ruling.

Cato Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies Robert Levy discusses the meaning of this court's ruling.

What was at stake in this case?

Well, President Bush authorized by executive order of the NSA to eavesdrop without obtaining a warrant on telephone calls and emails and other communications between U.S. citizens and permanent resident

aailings who are in the United States and persons outside of the United States.

Some civil libertarians have contended that those eavesdropping programs, again without the protection of a warrant,

violate the first the right of free speech and second privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment

and also a statute that was passed back in 1978 and later

remanded by the Patriot Act. The statute is called FISA, FISA, the Foreign Intelligence

Surveillance Act.

So really the issues that's at stake

is this tradeoff between civil liberties on the one hand

and national security on the other.

What are the different aspects of the court's ruling?

The court has made several holdings.

The first thing that the court held was that the plaintiffs in this case did have standing to pursue their lawsuit. Now standing is a doctrine that is

required of all plaintiffs because courts are not permitted to issue simply

advisory opinions.

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