It should be noted that their position on standing comes straight from <i>Clapper v. Amnesty International, No. 11-1025</i> which the Supreme Court decided in the government's favor this year.<p>The decision is that likely targets of surveillance who cannot prove that they were ACTUALLY surveilled have no standing to file a court case where they could issue subpoenas to the government which could prove whether they were. In short it is a catch-22. You can't sue about being unconstitutionally searched unless you can prove it happened. But you can't prove it happened without suing.<p>And the Supreme Court thinks that this is acceptable.
> <i>The Obama administration for the first time responded to a Spygate lawsuit, telling a federal judge the wholesale vacuuming up of all phone-call metadata in the United States is in the “public interest,” does not breach the constitutional rights of Americans and cannot be challenged in a court of law.</i><p>Oh, this changes everything. It's in our public interest, so we have nothing to worry about, guys. We can all go back to arguing vim vs emacs now.
Another infuriating and disappointing move by the Obama administration. On the contrary, this <i>will</i> be challenged in the courts by groups like the EFF and ACLU until they've won.<p>Let's make Feds remember that they work for us instead of special interests, corporations and the military/surveillance-industrial complex.
Note this story was also near the top of /r/news on Reddit, but has since been removed.<p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1in7p5/president_obama_nsa_surveillance_cannot_be/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1in7p5/president_obama...</a>
tl;dr:<p>1. The surveillance occurs in secret<p>2. Due to #1, you can't possibly prove that you, specifically, are a target of surveillance<p>3. Due to #2, you have no standing with the court<p>QED. I am speechless.
> “one of the largest surveillance efforts ever launched by a democratic government.”<p>Common, don't be shy! Don't pretend there are some "non-democratic" governments somewhere that do even more surveillance!<p>Largest ever launched by any government, by far.
So along these lines the government should have no problem supplying me with the names and home addresses of all of the government officials, provided that I really, REALLY promise (seriously!) to not look at it unless I'm authorized to. Because I don't actually HAVE it until I LOOK at it.<p>Cool, where do I find this data? I promise not to look until I'm authorized!
Orin Kerr (law professor at George Washington University) has written on the subject of whether the collection of phone metadata violates the 4th Amendment, given the history of Supreme Court opinions on the matter:<p><a href="http://www.volokh.com/2013/07/17/metadata-the-nsa-and-the-fourth-amendment-a-constitutional-analysis-of-collecting-and-querying-call-records-databases/" rel="nofollow">http://www.volokh.com/2013/07/17/metadata-the-nsa-and-the-fo...</a><p>In short, these legal actions have a hard journey ahead of them.
I'm not a lawyer, but to say that this "cannot be challenged in court" is a pretty terrible interpretation. The government <i>asks</i> the court system (where this is, in fact, already being challenged) to deny an injunction stopping the metadata collection before this is fully heard in court.
Why not intentionally put someone in the "surveillance spotlight"? Have them checkout on the wrong books from the library, join the wrong forums, frequently make phone calls to foreign malign actors overseas. Then lay all of this information bare to the public and say "Either I am being surveilled by the NSA or they are utterly incompetent to the point of not being effective in their charge". If then you still don't have standing, at least sue them for not doing their jobs. (Disclaimer: IANAL)
How can enough people add their name to the the suit that it becomes a statistical likelihood to meet the criteria for standing? I would imagine that if you get as many people on the no-fly list as possible to be party to the suit then it is almost a certainty that at least one of the plaintiffs have had their information monitored and the suit can move forward.
I'm confused: why does the executive branch ("Obama's administration" in paragraph 1) get to tell a judge this or submit a "filing"?<p>Is this just them stating their position? At what point can/will SCOTUS get involved?<p><i>(pardon my ignorance if I incorrectly assumed the president doesn't get to decide what's constitutional)</i>
Nice dictatorship with a faux democracy attached you have got there, people ... I take it that since the president set up FISA and the NSA spying, which cannot be unrooted by a court, he considers himself completely immune and above the law also.
You (and I mean you, Ameican reader) put up with full scale systemic 4th Amendment violations by TSA searching every bag at airports on grounds of public safety and non-targeted searches.<p>NSA now does the same, just with phones. Precedent matters.
Wow, I didn't see that one coming </sarcasm>. I just hope the patriot act gets killed or significantly rewritten for the better in 2015 when it is up for renewal.
So much for that "debate" we were supposed to have. There's also the "balance" thing that apparently only Obama administration gets to decide on.