Supreme Court blocks challenge to NSA phone tracking
by alethoRT | November 18, 2013
The Supreme Court announced Monday
morning that it would not be considering at this time a complaint filed
months earlier that challenged the legality of the National Security
Agency’s dragnet telephone surveillance program.
The high court issued a notice early Monday
without comment acknowledging that it would not be weighing in on a
matter introduced this past June by a privacy watchdog group after NSA
leaker Edward Snowden revealed evidence showing that the United States
intelligence agency was collecting metadata pertaining to the phone
calls of millions of American customers of the telecommunications
company Verizon on a regular basis.
That
disclosure — the first of many NSA documents leaked by Mr. Snowden —
prompted the Washington, DC-based Electronic Privacy Information Center,
or EPIC, to ask the Supreme Court to consider taking action that would
end the collection of phone records on a major scale.
When
EPIC filed their petition in June, they wrote, “We believe that the
NSA’s collection of domestic communications contravenes the First and
Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and violates
several federal privacy laws, including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 as amended.”
“We
ask the NSA to immediately suspend collection of solely domestic
communications pending the competition of a public rulemaking as
required by law. We intend to renew our request each week until we
receive your response,” EPIC said.
Five
months later, though, the Supreme Court said this week that it would
not be hearing EPIC’s plea. A document began circulating early Monday in which the high court listed the petition filed by the privacy advocates as denied.
With
other cases still pending, however, alternative routes may eventually
lead to reform of the NSA’s habits on some level. Lower courts are still
in the midst of deciding what action they will take with regards to
similar lawsuits filed by other groups in response to the Snowden leaks
and the revelations they made possible. The American Civil Liberties
Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and conservative legal
activist Larry Klayman have filed separate civil lawsuits in various US
District Courts challenging the NSA’s program, all of which are still
pending.
Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the EFF, told the Washington Post
only weeks after the first Snowden leak appeared that the disclosures
had been a “tremendous boon” to other matters being litigated, and
pointed to no fewer than five previously-filed complaints challenging
various government-led surveillance programs.
"Now
that this secret surveillance program has been disclosed, and now that
Congressional leaders and legal scholars agree it is unlawful, we have a
chance for the Supreme Court to weigh in,” EPIC lead counsel Alan
Butler told The Verge on Monday.
No comments:
Post a Comment