After The New York Times broke the news of the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) warrantless surveillance in December 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) “asked the federal courts to rule that the program was illegal and to bring it to an end. …On August 17, 2006, U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor…rejected almost every argument from the Bush administration, including the ‘inherent powers’ of the president, and the ‘authorization to use military force against al-Qaeda’ arguments, and found in favor of the ACLU. Ruling that the NSA program was illegal, violating both FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution [prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures], she ordered it shut down. ‘It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly when his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,’ she wrote. ‘The three separate branches of government were developed as a check and balance for one another.’ Rejecting the idea that the president can eavesdrop on Americans simply as a result of his ‘inherent powers,’ Judge Taylor ruled, ‘There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all *inherent powers* must derive from that Constitution.’ “
– James Bamford, The Shadow Factory, Page 290