Fed Say NSA Surveillance, Too Secretive For Court
The US government filed documents in two long-running cases (both in California’s Northern District) related to National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance. As the New York Times notes, these filings mark the first time the government acknowledged that the NSA “started systematically collecting data about Americans’ e-mails and phone calls in 2001, alongside its program of wiretapping certain calls without warrants.The government continues to evoke state secrets privilege—the right to prevent certain, potentially harmful information from being used in court even if it means a case might be dismissed—despite previous rulings against this argument. In Jewel v. NSA, a judge ruled against the state secrets claim back in July—before the Snowden revelations. Jewel v. NSA dates back to 2008, and it’s still proceeding despite plenty of stops and starts. The EFF identifies the fundamental question in the case as “whether the spying program is legal and constitutional.” After its filing in 2008, the government moved to dismiss the case in 2009, a judge in the Northern District of California agreed in 2010, but the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals eventually reinstated the case in 2011. The government renewed its attempts to dismiss Jewel v. NSA in 2012, but that argument was rejected earlier this year.