FALLS CHURCH, Va.: A divided federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of an ACLU lawsuit challenging part of the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international email and phone communications.
The Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the trial must be dismissed after the government invoked the state’s secret privilege, meaning a thorough exploration of the issue in a court of law would harm national security.
In the lawsuit, the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, stated that the National Security Agency’s upstream surveillance program essentially intercepted some of its international communications and was infringing on free-speech rights and its Fourth Amendment rights against unfair search and seizure. Is.
The details of the upstream program are classified, but it collects data from transmissions over high-speed cables that carry electronic communications in and out of the country.
In the majority opinion, Obama-appointed Judge Albert Diaz agreed with the government’s claim that the program’s constitutionality could not be prosecuted without harming national security.
There is no conceivable defense to this claim that also would not reveal the information the government is trying to protect: how upstream surveillance works and where it is conducted, Diaz wrote.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote that the Supreme Court is prepared to hear arguments on a case that could broaden the breadth of state secrets privilege, and to allow the government to enforce that decision before. is a mistake.
She said the majority opinion is “for a broader proposition: a trial under the state secret doctrine can be dismissed after minimal judicial review, even when the government makes its sole defense on a far-flung hypothetical.
Patrick Tomei, an attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project representing Wikimedia, said he was deeply disappointed by the decision and that lawyers were considering his appeal options.
Every day, the NSA is snatching American communications from the backbone of the Internet and into its spy machines, infringing privacy and silencing free expression,” he said in a statement, clarifying Congress. Courts can and must decide whether this warrantless digital dragnet complies with the Constitution.
The lawsuit was filed following revelations from NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the scope of agency surveillance. The lawsuit was first raised in 2015 over the issue of whether the plaintiffs stood to sue. But the 4th Circuit revived the case and sent it back to a lower court, which dismissed it again in 2019 on state secret logic.
The upstream program is just one part of the NSA’s oversight. The downstream portion lists Internet service providers such as Google in collecting communications for selected targets. The court’s ruling indicated that downstream collection provided the majority of what is collected by the NSA.
Disclaimer: This post has been self-published from the agency feed without modification and has not been reviewed by an editor
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