American appeals court rejects challenge of NSA surveillance
Ever since whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked information to the press concerning the surveillance and observation methods of both the NSA and GCHQ, the general public has been playing closer attention to how our personal data is collected and used.
This has led to many different legal challenges being brought against both agencies, both made by individual citizens of both countries, and by legal bodies representing the rights of the public, such as the Privacy International. While some of these cases have been successful, most notably the one in which the data sharing practices of the NSA and GCHQ were declared illegal, not all of them have resulted in changes in surveillance methods.
This week, we've heard that another legal challenge concerning surveillance, this time focused on the NSA, has also failed.
The case was being heard at a federal appeals court in the USA, and was brought by a citizen, conservative lawyer Larry Klayman, who disagreed with the NSA's telephone surveillance and data collection practices. The case took specific umbrage with mass data collection, where the NSA will collect and store metadata from thousands of users, sometimes with no intention of ever using it to bring about a legal case.
It was originally tried in 2013, where the a judge in a lower court ruled in favour of Mr Klayman, stating that the NSA's bulk collection of metadata was 'unconstitutional', and at the time it was the first case to focus on mass surveillance in an American court.
In his ruling, the judge suggested implementing an injunction of mass telephone surveillance, but this decision has been reversed following the NSA's successful appeal. In the appeal case, the judges ruled that as Mr Klayman could not prove that his telephone records had been caught up in the mass surveillance programme, he had not been justified to bring the case to court, and therefore no ruling on the legality of the surveillance techniques in question could be made.
Now, the court will try to determine if Mr Klayman's records had been collected, at which point a new decision will be made by the courts.