It has been over a year since Edward Snowden leaked details of the NSA’s phone surveillance or “wiretapping” program to the world. On Tuesday, the controversial surveillance program will finally be heard in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Hill reports that conservative lawyer Larry Klayman is challenging the constitutionality of the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata about Americans’ phone calls, including the numbers dialed, the length of the calls and the frequency with which calls were made. Though the agency argued that it protected privacy rights by not looking into the content of the calls themselves, civil liberties advocates see the program as a dangerous infringement on privacy rights.
The program in question was revealed by the Snowden leaks.
“We want [the court] to reach the constitutional issues because it has to be decided now, for the sake of the future,” Klayman said. “And all we’re really asking is that the NSA adhere to the law.”
In his case, Klayman argues that the NSA program violates constitutional protections of free association, privacy and fair legal process. He claims that the metadata collected by the program can be very revealing and there is no proof that such snooping is effective in stopping terrorist attacks. He notes that if the NSA’s program were working, it would have tipped off law enforcement to the recent shootings in Ottawa, Canada.
However, the government, in its court filings, defends the program, saying that the phone record collection program “at most, minimally intrudes on constitutional privacy rights and serves the paramount government interest of combating terrorism.” The Justice Department also added that “carefully crafted safeguards,” including oversight from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, protect privacy.
Klayman argued his case successfully before District Judge Richard Leon in December. In a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration, Leon called the surveillance program likely unconstitutional and “almost Orwellian.”
While Klayman and other supporters of civil liberties, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for National Securities Studies, all hope that his case will be successful, it is not the only legal challenge being made by the NSA’s critics.
A second case, ACLU v. Clapper, was argued before the Second Court of Appeals in September, after the first judge to hear the case upheld the surveillance program as a “counterpunch” against Al Qaeda and a third case, Smith v. Obama, is set for oral argument before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in December.
Many think that the issue will eventually end up before the Supreme Court.
