Snowden Leaks Could Spell High Court Reboot of NSA Challenge
By ADAM KLASFELD
(CN) - Edward Snowden's leaks should prompt reconsideration of whether Amnesty International has standing to challenge mass surveillance, a rights group told the high court Friday.
In 2008, Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal complaint on behalf of labor, legal, media and human-rights organizations opposing warrantless surveillance as unconstitutional.
Saying the groups could not prove that the government actually spied on them, and that their fear of injury under Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was merely speculative, a Manhattan federal judge initiall sided with the government on summary judgment.
When the 2nd Circuit reversed in March 2011, it said the critics did indeed have standing to fight as the entities would be more than tangentially related to the "persons of interest" who could be the target of any possible surveillance. That 63-page decision said government surveillance poses a threat that is great enough to have caused immediate harm. The groups have gone to great lengths to avoid the chance that wiretaps could compromise their communications with clients and sources, according to the ruling.
This claim of "future injury" was too " speculative ," however, for a five-member majority of the Supreme Court in February 2013.
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