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A three-judge panel in the 9th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that a phone surveillance program conducted by the FBI more than seven years ago not only was illegal, but possibly unconstitutional.
The case, ACLU v. Clapper, has been winding its way through the courts since June 2013, when the American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit against the National Security Agency, accusing the NSA of illegally collecting Americans’ phone records. According to the ACLU, the NSA was looking at metadata that could reveal “intimate details” about peoples’ private lives.
The activity stopped in 2015 after whistleblower Edward Snowden published information on the program, The Hill said. The ACLU said it considers the recent ruling a victory. "The ruling makes plain that the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records violated the Constitution,” the ACLU’s senior staff attorney, Patrick Toomey, said in a statement published in The Hill.
“The decision also recognizes that when the government seeks to prosecute a person, it must give notice of the secret surveillance it used to gather its evidence. This protection is a vital one given the proliferation of novel spying tools the government uses today."
The ruling also directs government prosecutors to inform criminal defendants “when it plans to use evidence gathered or derived from surveillance done overseas.”
SOURCES:
The Hill September 2, 2020
The Washington Post September 2, 2020
ACLU October 29, 2015