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."

Comments

Yee Ha!

[mlwmohawk]

Lets see how far we can get. We all need to donate. This is a test of our very democracy. I fear its long gone.

The impact of metadata surveillance

[gentryx]

Today, most US media seem to be obsessed with pointing fingers at Snowden. What few people realize is how this total surveillance of NSA and GCHQ tilt the balance of powers. Using graph theory, it is possible to compute (just from knowing who's talking to whom) who the agitators are in any given movement. If the Brits would have had the same technology back in 1770, there would have been no American Revolution. They'd simply have pinpointed and jailed the members of the Committees of Correspondence, leaving the revolution headless. A malevolent government could use this technology to suppress its own people. This is too much power.

Re:The impact of metadata surveillance

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

This. The real problem is misuse, not use for finding terrorists. As long as there is one secret room in one of these multiying billion-dollar data centers, it's all for naught.

Let us listen in on the Republicans, or Democrats, and see their strategy. Then we can preemptively counter it with trial balloons, dirty tricks, astroturfing, and so on. This crap is bad enough without the power to make any of the opponents' plans stillborn or DOA.

Let's check up on candidate X. No alarms go off. See his calls, and calls of those he calls -- ooh, he's talking to someone rich, or a PAC. How can we discredit them?

Of course, Snowden claimed he could listen directly to their phone with no alarms going off, but even without, it's a dangerous power.

"They can't do that" is toothless if it's just a manual requirement for forms and permission, instead of uncorruptible logging and alarms going off in 50 managers' offices.

Re:fourth amendment vs. first amendment

[Sarten-X]

The fourth amendment's applicability is only certain in the minds of privacy advocates. Legally, the fourth amendment is generally held to mean that the government can't disrupt your life with its searches or target someone specifically without a good enough reason to convince a judge. The NSA's sniffing is legally comparable to a police dragnet checking door-to-door for a suspect - it infringes privacy, but the impact on any particular person's life isn't unreasonable.

On the other hand, the first amendment is a much easier fight. The leaked information shows fairly well that the snooping (or at least its analysis) was targeted before any crime was committed. That means that the NSA's prejudiced against particular groups, and that's within spitting distance of a first-amendment violation.

After showing that some instances violate the first amendment, it's also an easier fight to argue that any wide-spread persistent snooping program is too easily also a violation. It's a similar tactic to the argument that no separate racially-segregated schools can be equal. Then once the first amendment has been invoked to protect people's metadata as free speech, then the fourth can be brought in to argue that any snooping of metadata must be approved by a warrant beforehand.

That also puts privacy in a much stronger place in the long run. By going after the first amendment protection, it can be argued that any aspect of a person's social life is a protected expression (within the limits usually invoked, like prohibiting murder as a form of protest), so that prohibits the government from seeking something the public knows (like a vehicle's whereabouts).

If successful, it could reconcile the public's love of sharing information with the hatred of the government learning that information.

Re:fourth amendment vs. first amendment

[Anonymous Coward]

Legally, the fourth amendment is generally held to mean that the government can't disrupt your life with its searches or target someone specifically without a good enough reason to convince a judge. The NSA's sniffing is legally comparable to a police dragnet checking door-to-door for a suspect - it infringes privacy, but the impact on any particular person's life isn't unreasonable.

The reason they take that stance is simply so they can violate people's rights with impunity as long as the violations are not deemed to be 'unreasonable.' Not new, but still pathetic nonetheless. The fourth amendment says no such thing, and no intelligent person would say that collecting data on nearly all Americans in an effort to stop the terrorist bogeyman is even close to reasonable; they would say it's a disgusting practice created by a freedom-hating government. The impact is unreasonable.

Re:fourth amendment vs. first amendment

[jcr]

The NSA's sniffing is legally comparable to a police dragnet checking door-to-door for a suspect

Nope. It's billions of counts of illegal wiretapping against people who are not suspects. That's why it's a crime.

-jcr