"A federal court in San Francisco sided with the U.S. Department of Justice, ruling that the plaintiffs could not win a significant portion of the case—a Fourth Amendment challenge to the NSA’s tapping of the Internet backbone—without disclosure of classified information that would harm national security. In other words, Judge Jeffrey White found that “state secrets” can trump the judicial process and held that EFF’s clients could not prove they have standing."
From the linked ruling in the article. This type of ruling is mind boggling - what a giant cop out that the government can just say "oh sorry national security!" to end court cases.
It's unbelievable to me, too. It basically means the government can both violate the Constitution and absolve itself for the reason of "national security". To think how that would have gone over in the 18th century!
Frustrating as well because supporters of the programs like to bring up how they've been challenged in court before so they're perfectly fine and legal. Well, not exactly...
Who says the specific programs have been challenged in court? The argument is that they rest on principles that have been set forth in previous Supreme Court opinions.
Do you see the box labeled "filtering aimed at eliminating fully domestic transactions"? That's there because precedent says the 4th amendment does not protect things crossing the border. So the crux of the case is showing that the unconstitutional part happens in the first box--when the data is first copied.
In my opinion, none of it is protected once it's on the backbone. If hundreds of AT&T or Verizon engineers can access a data stream, it's not "private." But I also think the question should be litigated in court.
The question already has been litigated in court. To monitor a domestic phone conversion (which prior to digital exchanges the switchboard operator could listen into) requires a warrant to capture. Same principle here.
Just because something can be easily listened to doesn't mean the government doesn't need a warrant.
> "It also said that the additional information needed was just too secret to serve as a basis for a court decision about whether the constitution has been violated. As a result, the District Court found that a “full and fair adjudication” of our clients' Fourth Amendment claims would require consideration of evidence covered by the state secrets privilege and would risk harm to national security."
This is pathetic. This country is seriously fucked.
"As former NSA Director Michael Hayden recently put it, "[L]et me be really clear. NSA doesn't just listen to bad people. NSA listens to interesting people. People who are communicating information."
Isn't this the correct approach? In a perfect world the NSA would only need to "listen" to criminals outside the US, but the world isn't perfect and adversaries don't play by the rules.
Shouldn't this be a triumph of technology that can tell the difference between Johnny-High-Schooler researching the middle east, and a radicalized potential terrorist?
Yea, well they could stop a lot more terrorism if they just shot everyone in the head they suspected was a terrorist or interacted with anyone they suspected was a terrorist.
From the linked ruling in the article. This type of ruling is mind boggling - what a giant cop out that the government can just say "oh sorry national security!" to end court cases.