US Supreme Court Declines to Hear NSA Spying Complaint
upstart writes:
US Supreme Court declines to hear NSA spying complaint:
America's Supreme Court has declined to hear Wikimedia Foundation's challenge of the NSA's "upstream" surveillance program, effectively exempting the agency's data collection from review as a state secret.
In 2015, two years after Edward Snowden's public disclosures about the NSA's network surveillance, Wikimedia Foundation, with eight other organizations and the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, sued the NSA and the US Justice Department alleging the bulk gathering of internet traffic violated Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
The NSA program is alleged to involve capturing all data entering and leaving the US via internet backbones. Captured packets get reassembled into transactions that get filtered for the presence of "selectors" (e.g., email addresses) associated with surveillance targets and those transactions then get ingested into a system for review.
The Wikimedia Foundation et al. argued that the NSA's warrantless surveillance program, which the government contends is authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is unlawful because it permits surveillance of US persons' international communications without a warrant or the approval of a public court, provided targeted individuals are located outside the US, but the kicker is that they can backtrace calls to associates who may have committed no crime.
Shortly after reports based on Snowden's leaked documents revived interest in network data security, the US Director of National Intelligence published a letter [PDF] that asserts NSA surveillance operates lawfully. "Collection of intelligence information under Section 702 is subject to an extensive oversight regime, incorporating reviews by the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches," the DNI letter said.
US courts, however, have declined to hear challenges to that claim.
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