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NSA Phone Surveillance Faces Fresh Court Test

lsiebert 12y ago
There is a paywall if you go to the link directly. Try going through https://news.google.com/news?ncl=dkcZSdqad8lGX_MN3eau-UDuh7yUM&q=nsa+court&lr=English&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1BNUVNNl1umgBP_bgegH&ved=0CCMQqgIwAA https://news.google.com/news?ncl=dkcZSdqad8lGX_MN3eau-UDuh7y... Which worked for me.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
jdp23 12y ago
This is an appeal of Klayman vs. Obama, where Judge Leon ruled last December that "[b]ulk telephony metadata collection and analysis almost certainly does violate a reasonable expectation of privacy," which, in turn, likely results in a violation of the Fourth Amendment.[1] This is probably the biggest win so far in this round of NSA cases, although EFF and ACLU also have complementary lawsuits in progress. The government's arguing that Klayman doesn't have standing because (they say) it's extremely unlikely his metadata would ever be viewed by a human being, as opposed to just recorded and analyzed. This is by the way the same Larry Klayman who's suing the federal government arguing that the current Ebola screening procedures open the door to ISIS suicide terrorists. [2] Strange bedfellows. Indeed. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/historic-ruling-federal-judge-declares-nsa-mass-phone-surveillance-likely https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/historic-ruling-federa... [2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/10/14/larry-klayman-is-suing-the-federal-government-because-of-ebola-yes-really/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/10/14/la...
- themartorana 12y ago
  The idea of "standing" seems horrible to me, "me" being firmly not-a-lawyer. It means it's difficult for me to contest something on merit in a court system if I can't prove it wrongs me directly. But judicial review doesn't happen without an actor - someone to raise the flag that something needs reviewing. Is there a good argument for having to prove standing before being able to challenge an affront to human rights or the Constitution, or anything else I can plainly see is wrong but may not directly affect me?
  - spacemanmatt 12y ago
    Short version: It's better to require plaintiffs have standing (actual controversy) than to allow them to bring hypothetical controversies to the courts.
ObviousScience 12y ago
> The U.S. argued the simple act of government computers collecting his or anyone else’s phone records aren’t violations of the Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches or seizures and, in its appeals-court filings, suggests such issues only come into play when a government employee looks at a specific person’s phone records. Except that a government employee specifically instructed the computers to gather and analyze his records to flag them for storage or not. This is clearly a search performed at the request of a government agent, and should trigger 4th amendment protections. They can't take papers out of everyone's house just because they use robots to do it: we'd all recognize that the robots were merely a tool following instructions of a government agent who instigated the seizure. The case is no different because they used a different tool to perform the search and seizure - it was at the request and under the direction of a US government agent.

There is a paywall if you go to the link directly. Try going through https://news.google.com/news?ncl=dkcZSdqad8lGX_MN3eau-UDuh7yUM&q=nsa+court&lr=English&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1BNUVNNl1umgBP_bgegH&ved=0CCMQqgIwAA https://news.google.com/news?ncl=dkcZSdqad8lGX_MN3eau-UDuh7y... Which worked for me.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

jdp23 12y ago

This is an appeal of Klayman vs. Obama, where Judge Leon ruled last December that "[b]ulk telephony metadata collection and analysis almost certainly does violate a reasonable expectation of privacy," which, in turn, likely results in a violation of the Fourth Amendment.[1] This is probably the biggest win so far in this round of NSA cases, although EFF and ACLU also have complementary lawsuits in progress. The government's arguing that Klayman doesn't have standing because (they say) it's extremely unlikely his metadata would ever be viewed by a human being, as opposed to just recorded and analyzed. This is by the way the same Larry Klayman who's suing the federal government arguing that the current Ebola screening procedures open the door to ISIS suicide terrorists. [2] Strange bedfellows. Indeed. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/historic-ruling-federal-judge-declares-nsa-mass-phone-surveillance-likely https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/historic-ruling-federa... [2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/10/14/larry-klayman-is-suing-the-federal-government-because-of-ebola-yes-really/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/10/14/la...

themartorana 12y ago
The idea of "standing" seems horrible to me, "me" being firmly not-a-lawyer. It means it's difficult for me to contest something on merit in a court system if I can't prove it wrongs me directly. But judicial review doesn't happen without an actor - someone to raise the flag that something needs reviewing. Is there a good argument for having to prove standing before being able to challenge an affront to human rights or the Constitution, or anything else I can plainly see is wrong but may not directly affect me?
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
  Short version: It's better to require plaintiffs have standing (actual controversy) than to allow them to bring hypothetical controversies to the courts.

ObviousScience 12y ago

> The U.S. argued the simple act of government computers collecting his or anyone else’s phone records aren’t violations of the Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches or seizures and, in its appeals-court filings, suggests such issues only come into play when a government employee looks at a specific person’s phone records. Except that a government employee specifically instructed the computers to gather and analyze his records to flag them for storage or not. This is clearly a search performed at the request of a government agent, and should trigger 4th amendment protections. They can't take papers out of everyone's house just because they use robots to do it: we'd all recognize that the robots were merely a tool following instructions of a government agent who instigated the seizure. The case is no different because they used a different tool to perform the search and seizure - it was at the request and under the direction of a US government agent.