Court ruled against NSA’s data collection program; case singles out Verizon
Last week a federal appeals court decided that collection of mobile phone data by the National Security Agency is illegal and not covered by provisions of the Patriot Act.
The ruling came after the American Civil Liberties Union took the NSA to court regarding the data collection, which is part of a program called PRISM that was revealed to the public by former defense contractor Edward Snowden.
Part of the court’s decision validated the ACLU’s position that because the organization is a Verizon Wireless customer, and the NSA required Verizon to hand over customer data, the ACLU has legal footing to sue the NSA.
News aggregator Fusion ran the matter by Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Tien is quoted as saying: “The Verizon order showed that all Verizon customers had their data collected, and ACLU was a Verizon customer; therefore, ACLU had its data collected.” He said “any Verizon customer has standing” to pursue a similar claim in the U.S. Court of Appeals 2nd Circuit.
The opinion, referencing the ACLU, reads, “Appellants challenge the telephone metadata program as a whole, alleging injury from the very collection of their telephone metadata. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. We think such collection is more appropriately challenged, at least from a standing perspective, as a seizure rather than a search.”
Although the entire scope of PRISM is unclear, particularly which carriers other than Verizon Wireless the NSA worked with, the court forecasted that customers of other carriers may also have standing.
“The government does not suggest that Verizon is the only telephone service provider subject to such an order; indeed, it does not seriously dispute appellants’ contention that all significant service providers in the United States are subject to similar order.”
Attorneys for the federal government argued that a lawsuit would only be plausible if a plaintiff could prove that data collected was subsequently reviewed.
The court wrote that the NSA admits that “when it queries its database, its computers search all of the material stored in the database in order to identify records that match the search term. In doing so, it necessarily searches appellants’ records electronically, even if such a search does not return appellants’ record for close review,” by a person. “That the search is conducted by a machine might lessen the intrusion, but does not deprive appellants of standing to object to the collection and review of their data.”
