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US Judge Rules Against NSA In Phone Spying Case (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes with news that a federal judge ordered the NSA to immediately end its collection of call records associated with a California lawyer and his law firm. Reuters reports: "Opponents of mass surveillance cheered the ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, who granted an injunction to bar the NSA from collecting the phone metadata of California attorney J.J. Little and his small legal practice. Unlike previous rulings against the NSA's program to vacuum up Americans' call data, which was exposed publicly by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013, Leon's opinion does not grant a stay, meaning it will take effect immediately."
Judge: NSA is to halt data collection.
NSA: Make us. BTW about that conversation you had with (bleep) last week...
Dont read TFA or anything:
A higher court previously rejected Klayman's challenge, saying he could not prove his phone was targeted by the NSA as Snowden's documents only revealed customers of Verizon Business Network Services, which is a subsidiary of Verizon Communications, such as Little, were implicated. Klayman added Little to his case to address the standing concern.
What prevents these rulings from happening is usually standing. That is, the plaintiff must have evidence that the NSA was surveilling them in order for the case to go to court at all. In this case, Snowden's documents specifically showed that Verizon customers were being monitored. The original plaintiff added J. J. Little to the case for the specific reason. But it did them little good because the ruling can then only apply to Verizon customers.
I wonder if they could then make this a class action by enjoining all Verizon customers into the suit.
U.S. judge suspected of terrorism went missing today. Circumstances are unclear. Senor officials at the NSA said; we certainly haven't seen him.
Just guessing:
Why bother to guess, when the answer is in the article, and someone already posted the correct answer?
Does every American need to file suit to shut it down completely?
Sorry, it's established precedent that individual Americans do not have the standing to bring legal proceedings against the NSA and other intelligence agencies for these so-called "blatant" and "ongoing" "violations" of the "Constitution". And of course civil liberties groups don't have standing either, since they're made up of individual Americans, and a million times zero is still zero. Too bad, so sad.
Don't worry, though--there's plenty of Congressional oversight of these agencies. The oversight process works like this: One: A whistleblower and/or the news media reveals evidence of wrongdoing. Two: Congress holds a hearing and calls in various top-level officials of the relevant agencies. Three: Congresspeople ask these officials tough and pointed questions about the legality and Constitutionality of various agency programs. Four: The officials lie about it, and also point out that terrorists and child molesters exist. Five: The news media and your Uncle Mark point out these transparent lies. Six: The officials are not terminated, nor do they suffer any other consequences for lying to Congress. Seven: Democracy is saved!