The NSA grossly over-reached using safeguarding American security as the justification when it got caught. But the fact that it took seven years to explicitly state this in a court is evidence of how long America has to go before it can truly contend with and rectify its sprawling surveillance state.
It also leaves one wondering what's currently underway we'll only find out about in a decade Mehreen Kasana. The panel held that the government may have violated the Fourth Amendment when it collected the telephony metadata of millions of Americans, including at least one of the defendants, pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA , but that suppression is not warranted on the facts of this case.
Having carefully reviewed the classified FISA applications and all related classified information, the panel was convinced that under established Fourth Amendment standards, the metadata collection, even if unconstitutional, did not taint the evidence introduced by the government at trial. Sneakers Apparel Luxury See All.
If the Fourth Amendment is to have any meaning, Congress must untangle the current web of broad authorizations and broad secrecy that allows the government to escape judicial accountability for its acts. First, there is the question of whom the surveillance targets. Targeting is not the same as collecting; the program may "target" foreign persons, but "acquire" information on Americans.
The current scope of this "incidental" surveillance will shock most Americans. Before , the law limited "incidental" surveillance by limiting primary surveillance.
The government had to show probable cause that its surveillance target was the agent of a foreign power, and that the facility being watched was about to be used by that target.
You could be incidentally observed if you communicated with a targeted foreign agent, but otherwise foreign communications were likely to be unmonitored. The government now does not need to show probable cause that the target is a foreign agent. It need only have a "reasonable belief" that the target is located outside of the United States. The new version of FISA does not require the government to identify its targets; it does not require the government to identify the monitored facilities; and the purpose of foreign intelligence gathering attaches to the whole surveillance program, not the individual investigation.
That is to say: the FISA Amendments Act permits the government to obtain a single court order through which it can monitor thousands, or even millions, of people. The scope of "incidental" surveillance thus vastly expanded as Congress lowered the requirements for spying on the primary target. Such a system will inevitably sweep in untold numbers of Americans who communicate with foreigners.
This brings us to the issue of oversight: who is watching the watchers? But what kind of oversight did Congress actually provide? When Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall asked whether communications by Americans had been gathered under the law, the Director of National Intelligence responded that it was not possible to identify the number of people in the United States whose communications were reviewed.
In this case, the government accused a Brooklyn man, Agron Hasbajrami, of attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization in Pakistan. After he pleaded guilty to one of the charges, the government belatedly admitted that it had read through his emails without a warrant.
Now Mr. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are supporting him as friends-of-the-court, arguing that the surveillance was unconstitutional the brief we filed is here.
It is conducted under a controversial law known as Section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Relying on Section , the government intercepts billions of international communications — including many sent or received by Americans — and it hunts through them in investigations that have nothing to do with national security. But this is no defense at all.
Americans regularly communicate with individuals overseas, and the government uses PRISM surveillance to collect and sift through many of these private communications.
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