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EFF Sues NSA, Justice Department, FBI
New submitter Jawnn writes "The Washington Post reports that the EFF has filed suit against the NSA in Federal Court in San Francisco, on behalf of multiple groups (court filing). Those groups include, 'Rights activists, church leaders and drug and gun rights advocates.' EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn said, 'The First Amendment protects the freedom to associate and express political views as a group, but the NSA's mass, untargeted collection of Americans' phone records violates that right by giving the government a dramatically detailed picture into our associational ties. Who we call, how often we call them, and how long we speak shows the government what groups we belong to or associate with, which political issues concern us, and our religious affiliation. Exposing this information – especially in a massive, untargeted way over a long period of time – violates the Constitution and the basic First Amendment tests that have been in place for over 50 years.' Apparently, not everyone out there is believing the 'If you have nothing to hide' excuses being offered up from various government quarters."
Again. Go to their site - eff.org - and donate.
They are all of equal importance.
However to answer your question, you rank their importance by which one appears to be most violated and easy to attack the culprit with.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
This has already been settled in court. If you can't prove that you were harmed by a secret program, you don't have standing to sue. (Regardless of the fact that you can never prove that you were harmed because, you know, it's a secret)
Precedent has been set, yes. But the ongoing lawsuit Hedges v. Obama may provide a counter precedent. Hedges cannot show he has been harmed by the NDAA of 2012, but he can show that he could be. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. So far he has been successful, but the government is appealing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedges_v._Obama
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
And then there's this argument: Rights aren't real if they can be taken away from you arbitrarily for no crime whatsoever.
George Carlin rightfully references Japanese-American internment as proof that rights in America are a fiction.
I am officially gone from
But the 9th tackles it in a very simple way: Show me where in the Constitution it is enumerated that the government is allowed to do this. You can't? Then the government is not allowed to engage in this activity.
It goes from attempting to prove that the government is violating something to the government proving that it is allowed to do something. A whole different ball of wax. And a whole lot easier for the people.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
You know what else used to be a nutball theory? That the NSA had vast spying capabilities being used to monitor large swaths of the Internet all of the time.
There's plenty of historical examples that show lists of citizens meeting some criteria turning into a list of people to inflict government action upon. We don't even have leave the US to find one. It was the US Census database that was used to round up Japanese citizens for internment to fulfill Executive Order 9066. If I have an unusual political belief--let's use the example from the TFA of advocating marijuana--I have every reason to believe that when the government collects data about my communication, it might one day use that to prosecute me for drug related offenses, and launch investigations of those I deal with too. That sort of chilling effect on political speech is why monitoring makes free political speech impossible. Any student of history knows the bad situations that leads to.