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The Verizon FISA court order would be the evidence. I suppose that the groups filing this petition (and likely to litigate eventually) would claim that American
by declan 13y ago
The Verizon FISA court order would be the evidence. I suppose that the groups filing this petition (and likely to litigate eventually) would claim that Americans can be substantively affected in terms of 4A and privacy harms even in the absence of knowledge.
Not an exact analogy, but if the FBI got a secret court to issue a secret order to secretly search everyone's house in a city looking for people doing Evil Thing X, and nobody knew about it until much later, would that presumptively illegal search be something that "substantively affect[ed] the public?"
- mpyne 13y agoI like the thought, but I personally wouldn't call a change in knowledge alone a substantive effect, there would have to be some concrete effect IMHO as well. E.g. if I was able to take those phone records and somehow benefit at the stock market by it that could be said to have substantively affected the public, but it would be hard for me to see "knowing a bunch of specific calls were made" as that by itself. And if the NSA is doing their job near-properly any actual substantive effect would have occurred to the non-U.S. public, which I can't imagine that the Act in question was envisioned to cover.