Month after month there has been one revelation after another about
how the National Security Agency (NSA) collects information from people
both inside and outside the US. Now, a judge has finally paid attention
to these activities and ruled that the NSA can't simply run willy-nilly
over US citizens' privacy rights.
Conservative legal activist and founder of Judicial Watch Larry Klayman filed a lawsuit against the US government earlier in 2013 alleging that NSA’s massive telephone surveillance program violates the "reasonable expectation of privacy,
free speech and association, right to be free of unreasonable searches
and seizures and due process rights." US District Court Judge Richard
Leon largely agreed and ruled that the NSA metadata collection program
appears to violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and
seizures.
Leon, a George W. Bush appointee to the US District Court of the District of Columbia, wrote that he could not imagine a more "'indiscriminate' and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than
this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data
on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and
analyzing it without judicial approval."
General Keith Alexander, the NSA's director, recently defended this bulk gathering of phone call metadata. He told the US Senate that "There is no other way that we know of to connect the dots."
Be that at it may, Leon believes it's also unconstitutional. Even
with his strong opinion that the NSA is in the wrong for collecting this
data, Leon's preliminary injunction does not require the NSA to stop
its data collection.
Instead, his preliminary injunction, which specifically deals with
the NSA from collecting metadata pertaining to the Verizon accounts of
Klayman and one of his clients, Charles Strange, the father of a
deceased Navy SEAL, has been stayed. This gives the government a chance
to appeal his injunction before he rules that the NSA must stop
gathering metadata without a warrant.
This is believed to be the first significant judicial setback for the
NSA’s surveillance program since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden
started leaking NSA governments. Before that, the NSA's metadata program
had been approved multiple times by US Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court.
For now, nothing has changed. The NSA is still free to gather data on
phone calls made in the US. This injunction serves notice that may not
be the case for much longer.
0 Comments
Thanks for visit this blog-cum-website. Please feel free to write your feedback and comment. I'll try to reply you as soon as possible.