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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."
However, I think it will be unlikely that the NSA will comply with the order, and that no one will be able to determine if NSA complied with the order, and if it was found NSA did not comply with the order no one would be punished.
Did he prove he has standing to sue? Isn't that what most (all?) other lawsuits failed to do resulting in dismissal?
Just guessing:
- He's a lawyer (part of the legal system itself), suing over the phone info on himself and his firm.
- His, and his firm's, consultations with clients are privileged. So keeping records on who they talked to and when are a real infringement on a fundamental and recognized right. (It's not just "chilling" speech. Its chilling the right to an attorney.)
- The Snowden revelations show that these records are being kept on him - because they're being kept on EVERYONE. So he cleared the other hurdle that the secrecy of agency operations (including the gag order provisions of National Security Letters) usually raised.
So it looks like he's got enough to avoid the "no standing" excuse for courts to drop the hot potato.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
Does every American need to file suit to shut it down completely?
Rule of thumb for getting things to happen via the courts:
1) Find a slam-dunk case to establish a precedent. You're putting the first crack in the wall, establishing that there's something there.
2) Do (typically a small number of) additional cases to establish the extent of the precedent's application. Now that something is established, the courts switch from stonewall to map-it-out mode.
Prosecutors do this sort of stuff all the time. (That's why things like restricting freedom of the press and speech generally starts with going after child molesters and child pornography purveyors.)
But it works both ways. Here we have a case where government investigative agencies are going after the communications between lawyers and clients. That's a fundamental part of the legal system, so the actions of the spooks are likely to be as repellent to the judges at all levels as child molesters are to juries.
If the rulings on this case put the first crack in the wall, it should take no more than a handful more to get solid rules established about what the spooks can't do, and how to figure out when they did it and spank them.
After that, as with other rights, we'll be on the usual treadmill: The bad behavior will be reduced a lot; violations will occur, become more common, and eventually institutionalized - when not caught and fought; and intermittent suits will be needed now and then to trim it back and/or map out additional hands-off boundaries.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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!