ACLU lawsuit against NSA mass surveillance dropped by federal court
Source: The Guardian
A federal district court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the National Security Agency.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the surveillance program was innately harmful, despite the NSAs silence on it in court. The NSAs mass surveillance violates our clients constitutional rights to privacy, freedom of speech, and freedom of association, and it poses a grave threat to a free internet and a free society, said Ashley Gorski, a staff attorney with the ACLU national security project. The private communications of innocent people dont belong in government hands.
The judge in the case, TS Ellis III, said the suit relied on the subjective fear of surveillance, because the NSA did not admit to having collected any of the information it was alleged to have collected by the ACLU.
Ellis admitted that acquiring enough information to prove illegal spying was difficult whether or not illegal spying had occurred, but said that difficulty was a feature, not a bug. Establishing standing to challenge section 702 in a civil case is plainly difficult, he wrote. But such difficulty comes with the territory.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/23/aclu-nsa-surveillance-lawsuit-dismissed
Sam Thielman
Friday 23 October 2015 23.09 BST
KoKo
(84,711 posts)the Court Ruled and what they can do to go at it from another angle....testing.
It's sad its come to this, though, isn't it?
christx30
(6,241 posts)Ellis admitted that acquiring enough information to prove illegal spying was difficult whether or not illegal spying had occurred, but said that difficulty was a feature, not a bug. Establishing standing to challenge section 702 in a civil case is plainly difficult, he wrote. But such difficulty comes with the territory.
So he's saying that unless we can get the information from a highly secretive group that apparently doesn't have to respond to discovery requests, we can't even establish standing? And it won't happen unless someone in that group illegally releases the information. And that illegal release would probably be inadmissible.
And the wheels go round and round.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)blackspade
(10,056 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Pretty soon most people won't remember voting and the government will know who does and have the data to show it.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)We have a fundamental right to privacy. The government is violating that right.
Can you imagine what Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, et al. would do in this situation?
To say nothing of Tom Hancock or Thomas Paine.
What is our country about anyway?
Did someone up there in the NSA forget?