17 May, 2014

Supreme Court Dismisses Challenge to FISA Amendments Act; EFF's Lawsuit Over NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Remains | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Supreme Court Dismisses Challenge to FISA Amendments Act; EFF's Lawsuit Over NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Remains | Electronic Frontier Foundation: Yesterday, the Supreme Court sadly dismissed the ACLU’s case, Clapper v. Amnesty International, which challenged the FISA Amendments Act (FAA)—the unconstitutional law that allows the government to wiretap Americans communcating with people overseas. Under the FAA, the government can conduct this surveillance without naming individuals and without a traditional probable cause warrant, as the Fourth Amendment requires.

The court didn’t address the constitutionality of the FAA itself, but instead ruled that the plaintiffs—a group of lawyers, journalists, and human rights advocates who regularly communicate with likely "targets" of FAA wiretapping—couldn’t prove the surveillance was "certainly impending," so therefore didn’t have the "standing" necessary to sue. In other words, since the Americans did not have definitive proof that they were being surveilled under the FAA—a fact the government nearly always keeps secret—they cannot challenge the constitutionality of the statute.