Anyone recognize the trend?? Supreme Court blocks challenge to NSA phone tracking Published: Nov 18, 2013, 07:42 PM The Supreme Court announced Monday morning that it would not be considering at this time a complaint filed months earlier that challenged the legality of the National Security Agencys dragnet telephone surveillance program. The high court issued a notice early Monday without comment acknowledging that it would not be weighing in on a matter introduced this past June by a privacy watchdog group after NSA leaker Edward Snowden revealed evidence showing that the United States intelligence agency was collecting metadata pertaining to the phone calls of millions of American customers of the telecommunications company Verizon on a regular basis. That disclosure the first of many NSA documents leaked by Mr. Snowden prompted the Washington, DC-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, to ask the Supreme Court to consider taking action that would end the collection of phone records on a major scale. When EPIC filed their petition in June, they wrote, We believe that the NSAs collection of domestic communications contravenes the First and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and violates several federal privacy laws, including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 as amended. We ask the NSA to immediately suspend collection of solely domestic communications pending the competition of a public rulemaking as required by law. We intend to renew our request each week until we receive your response, EPIC said. Five months later, though, the Supreme Court said this week that it would not be hearing EPICs plea. A document began circulating early Monday in which the high court listed the petition filed by the privacy advocates as denied. With other cases still pending, however, alternative routes may eventually lead to reform of the NSAs habits on some level. Lower courts are still in the midst of deciding what action they will take with regards to similar lawsuits filed by other groups in response to the Snowden leaks and the revelations they made possible. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and conservative legal activist Larry Klayman have filed separate civil lawsuits in various US District Courts challenging the NSAs program, all of which are still pending. Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the EFF, told the Washington Post only weeks after the first Snowden leak appeared that the disclosures had been a tremendous boon to other matters being litigated, and pointed to no fewer than five previously-filed complaints challenging various government-led surveillance programs. Now that this secret surveillance program has been disclosed, and now that Congressional leaders and legal scholars agree it is unlawful, we have a chance for the Supreme Court to weigh in, EPIC lead counsel Alan Butler told The Verge on Monday. -Reuters News ************************************************ In similar news ************************************************ Snowden effect: NSA struggles with 888% increase in FOIA requests Published: Nov 18, 2013, 09:37 PM The number of Freedom of Information Act requests filed with the National Security Agency has increased by 888 percent this fiscal year, according to USA Today, indicating an even broader interest exists in the NSAs domestic surveillance programs. The newspaper reported on Monday that the amount of FOIA requests received by the NSA has surged exponentially in recent months, particularly after former contractor-turned-leaker Edward Snowden began releasing classified internal documents in June detailing the agencys lesser-known intelligence gathering operations. Fueled by the Edward Snowden scandal, more Americans than ever are asking the National Security Agency if their personal life is being spied on, Yamiche Alcindor wrote for USA Today. Indeed, the thousands of FOIA requests filed by Americans since June far outnumber the mere hundreds that it received annually in previous years. According to Alcindor, the NSA only received 257 FOIA requests during the last fiscal year. Shortly after the first Snowden leak appeared on June 6, however, the agency became flooded with 1,302 requests almost immediately. During the following three months, the paper reported, the NSA received 2,538 requests, the likes of which have inundated the government staffers tasked with responding for the open records requests. Pamela Phillips, the chief of the NSA Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act Office, told the paper that This was the largest spike weve ever had. Weve had requests from individuals who want any records we have on their phone calls, their phone numbers, their e-mail addresses, their IP addresses, anything like that, Phillips said. Unfortunately for those thousands of Americans, however, the NSA isnt being all that helpful. Even though the NSA is experiencing thousands of similar requests from Americans wanting to know if and how theyve been targeted, the agency has been responding by refusing to admit what kind of intelligence, if any, its collected. Thirty-five-year-old Joel Watts of West Virginia told the paper that he sent a request but was told in response that the NSA couldnt say if they had any information on him. Its a sign of disrespect to American citizens and the democratic process, Watts, a health and safety administrator, told the paper. I should have the right to know if Im being surveyed if theres no criminal procedures in process. That isnt to say that the NSA is only now refusing to honor those requests, however. In August, Kevin Collier wrote for The Daily Dot that he filed a FOIA request with the agency for information on himself and was given a nearly identical response. Collier was quick to file a request shortly after Mr. Snowden first revealed proof of the NSAs ever-expanding spy apparatus in June, only to be told by the NSA several weeks later that details about the agencys programs cannot be discussed publically in order to prevent harm to the national security of the United States. [Y]our request is denied because the fact of the existence or non-existence of responsive records is a currently and properly classified matter, the agency wrote him. Our adversaries are likely to evaluate all public responses related to these programs, the NSA said at the time to Collier. Were we to provide positive or negative responses to requests such as yours, our adversaries compilation of the information provided would reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security. Months later, the NSA is apparently still giving concerned Americans the same runaround. We know were dealing with frustrated people and people who are upset by what theyre hearing, Phillips explained to USA Today, But thats the only response that were able to provide them on that topic. People are legitimately troubled by the idea that the government is monitoring and collecting information about their e-mail traffic, phone calls and who knows what else, chimed in Anne Weismann, a chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. There is a growing sense of horror every time there is a new report about the data. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would not be weighing in on a complaint filed by privacy advocates challenging one NSA program in particular exposed by Mr. Snowden, in turn suggesting that the intelligence community will be able to continually compelling telecommunication companies for the call records of millions of Americans, much to the chagrin of the thousands who have been wanting to know precisely what kind of dirt the agency has been accumulating.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 15:50:55 +0000
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