
NSA Phone Surveillance Faces Fresh Court Test - christianbryant
http://online.wsj.com/articles/nsa-phone-surveillance-faces-fresh-court-test-1414794375
======
ObviousScience
> The U.S. argued the simple act of government computers collecting his or
> anyone else’s phone records aren’t violations of the Constitution’s ban on
> unreasonable searches or seizures and, in its appeals-court filings,
> suggests such issues only come into play when a government employee looks at
> a specific person’s phone records.

Except that a government employee specifically instructed the computers to
gather and analyze his records to flag them for storage or not.

This is clearly a search performed at the request of a government agent, and
should trigger 4th amendment protections.

They can't take papers out of everyone's house just because they use robots to
do it: we'd all recognize that the robots were merely a tool following
instructions of a government agent who instigated the seizure.

The case is no different because they used a different tool to perform the
search and seizure - it was at the request and under the direction of a US
government agent.

------
jdp23
This is an appeal of Klayman vs. Obama, where Judge Leon ruled last December
that "[b]ulk telephony metadata collection and analysis almost certainly does
violate a reasonable expectation of privacy," which, in turn, likely results
in a violation of the Fourth Amendment.[1] This is probably the biggest win so
far in this round of NSA cases, although EFF and ACLU also have complementary
lawsuits in progress. The government's arguing that Klayman doesn't have
standing because (they say) it's extremely unlikely his metadata would ever be
viewed by a human being, as opposed to just recorded and analyzed.

This is by the way the same Larry Klayman who's suing the federal government
arguing that the current Ebola screening procedures open the door to ISIS
suicide terrorists. [2] Strange bedfellows. Indeed.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/historic-ruling-
federa...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/historic-ruling-federal-
judge-declares-nsa-mass-phone-surveillance-likely)

[2] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-
fix/wp/2014/10/14/la...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-
fix/wp/2014/10/14/larry-klayman-is-suing-the-federal-government-because-of-
ebola-yes-really/)

~~~
themartorana
The idea of "standing" seems horrible to me, "me" being firmly not-a-lawyer.
It means it's difficult for me to contest something on merit in a court system
if I can't prove it wrongs me directly. But judicial review doesn't happen
without an actor - someone to raise the flag that something needs reviewing.

Is there a good argument _for_ having to prove standing before being able to
challenge an affront to human rights or the Constitution, or anything else I
can plainly see is wrong but may not _directly_ affect me?

~~~
spacemanmatt
Short version: It's better to require plaintiffs have standing (actual
controversy) than to allow them to bring hypothetical controversies to the
courts.

------
lsiebert
There is a paywall if you go to the link directly. Try going through
[https://news.google.com/news?ncl=dkcZSdqad8lGX_MN3eau-
UDuh7y...](https://news.google.com/news?ncl=dkcZSdqad8lGX_MN3eau-
UDuh7yUM&q=nsa+court&lr=English&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1BNUVNNl1umgBP_bgegH&ved=0CCMQqgIwAA)

Which worked for me.

