Slashdot Mirror
Supreme Court Refuses To Hear EPIC Challenge To NSA Surveillance
Trailrunner7 writes "The challenge to the NSA's domestic surveillance program filed with the Supreme Court by the Electronic Privacy Information Center ended Monday, with the court refusing to consider the challenge at all. EPIC had filed the challenge directly with the Supreme Court rather than going through the lower courts. EPIC, a non-profit organization involved in privacy policy matters, had asked the court to vacate an order from a judge in the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court that had enabled the NSA's collection of hundreds of millions of Verizon call records under the so-called metadata collection program. The challenge hinged on the idea that the FISC had gone outside of its authority in granting the order."
I hate it when that happens.
EPIC tried to jump the line - they didn't follow the proper appeals process. That is highly frowned upon by the legal system and rarely succeeds. No surprise in this outcome. And nobody should read anything into it either way. One of the existing or future challenges may succeed as it works its way through the court system.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
No, what's needed is a source of sound legal advice and strategy. EPIC's strategy was fatally flawed from the beginning. Their failure should have been easily foreseen by just about anyone with a more than passing familiarity with the US legal system. It was a self-frag.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Uh, I hate to be the one to point out the fucking obvious here, but a "passing familiarity" with the law would be called the Constitution, and more specifically, the Fourth Amendment within that protects every citizen from such bullshit.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Which part of that Amendment specifically mentions the "bullshit" that we're talking about in this discussion?
The framers of the Constitution knew that they could not encompass every conceivable possibility into the document, or into those amendments that were later added. That's why we have courts, who interpret the document, and decide as best they can how to apply it to the issue before them.
So, you have the right to be secure in your "papers", and said right is protected by the 4th Amendment. The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not your papers include metadata stored on Verizon's system? That's a question for the courts, since it's obviously beyond the scope of the Constitution, and when that question has been asked in the past (the relevant precedent involves pen registers) the Courts have been fairly consistent in saying that you forfeited the expectation of privacy when you shared information with a third party, i.e., the phone company.
Now, one may argue that precedent was decided incorrectly and should be reversed. What one can't do (well you can, it's just unproductive) is scream about the 4th Amendment without any in-depth discussion of how that Amendment is interpreted by the courts, how we apply it to modern times with technologies that were unheard of when it was written, and how the case law as evolved over the years as those technologies have been developed.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.