NSA impossible to sue for mass surveillance

The presumption of innocence is a beautiful thing. “The accused is not guilty until proven otherwise” - isn't this a triumph of justice and legality? But, like any entity, this principle has a reverse side. Sometimes it is very difficult to prove something that seems quite obvious.

It seems that no one even disputes the existence of a mass spying program for citizens of different countries, PRISM . Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed the details of this unprecedented program , launched in 2007 and covering almost the entire globe. The National Security Agency, hiding behind the “Patriot Act” and other similar rhetoric, considers itself entitled to spy not only the citizens of their country, but in general all who they can reach.
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Have the fighters for justice tried to challenge this practice? Of course. Starting from Snowden himself, in 2013, he forever changed his life by disclosing top secret information. In June of this year, Senator Rand Paul tried to block the extension of the federal law “On rallying and strengthening America by providing the appropriate means required to curb and prevent terrorism” (known as the Patriot Act), using his veto power.

NSA suspended surveillance - for two days. After that, the Senate allowed the agency to renew it "for another six months." How? By adopting a new law - the USA Freedom Act . The name of the act is backronym , which stands for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Implementing Human Rights and Terminating Interception, Mass Data Collection and Online Surveillance.”

Wait a second. But the name of the law says about human rights and the end of the interception, isn’t it? So. And this wonderful law was proposed to be introduced back in 2013, just shortly after the publication of the facts of the mass eavesdropping of Snowden. The law stipulates that the PRISM program should be minimized.

But the Senate gave the NSA six months to terminate the program, and after they pass, the new program will work. In the framework of which all telecommunication providers will still have to collect and store all the information. Just provide it to the authorities, they will need only a court order. So, in order to complete the work of PRISM, it was again put into operation.

In the meantime, some activists are trying to fight the system according to its rules. Larry Clayman, having learned in 2013 about mass wiretapping, almost immediately filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration . He believes that no "Patriot Act" does not give anyone the right to listen to his personal communication by telephone and the Internet. He, of course, is right. And in 2013, the court even ruled in his favor, making a decision to suspend the plaintiff.

But in order to successfully accuse the NSA of surveillance, he needs to prove the fact that this surveillance took place. And it turned out to be very difficult to do - given that the activity of the agency falls under the “secret” stamp. On this basis, the Obama administration appealed to the court. As a result, on August 28, the appeal was successfully accepted, thereby annulling the previous decision.

Judge Janice Rogers Brown indicated in her decision : “In order to confirm their claim, the plaintiffs must prove that they have suffered rights violations. In other words, it is necessary for claimants to prove that it was their metadata collected by the government in the process of interception in the program under discussion, which was not done by them. ”

Judge Brown explains the decision by the fact that in the documents published by Snowden, it was stated only about the wiretapping by the Verizon Business Network Services provider agency - and not Verizon Wireless, whose client was Clayman. And despite the fact that it later turned out that the NSA had access to all US providers, the judge found the claim unproven. Another judge in this process generally considered that the NSA has the right not to disclose information about the existence of surveillance of the plaintiff.

How to prove that you are secretly watched, if this surveillance is secret? “This case is a sample of the Kafkian nightmare in which the plaintiffs are trying to resist illegal surveillance,” said Alan Butler, a lawyer at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “The problem of secrecy is that it is impossible to force the court to answer the question about the legality of government actions until you prove something that the government does not allow you to prove.”

This problem was met by everyone who tried to resist this system. In 2013, such a lawsuit was denied to a group of journalists, activists, lawyers and human rights activists who had legal proceedings with the Directorate of National Intelligence. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs can not prove the fact of interception of their conversations, in connection with which the claim can not be satisfied.

Fighters for the freedom of electronic communication "Electronic Frontier Foundation" (Electronic Frontier Foundation) sounded the alarm before anyone else, back in 2008 filed a lawsuit against the NSA on behalf of the clients of the largest provider AT & T. In February of this year, a very long trial was completed by a decision of the judge : he did not consider it possible to investigate in detail the issue of the existence of surveillance, since "such a study could seriously damage national security."

Julian Sanchez, one of the lawyers who worked with this process, noted that the perversity of the current situation is that only those who were convicted on the basis of data collected by the NSA can sue them - only they have the opportunity to prove the fact of surveillance. The rest of the millions of innocent people have no chance.

In November, the NSA will have to stop the PRISM program - in particular, due to the fact that it was proved in court that this program was never authorized by Congress . But for sure a new program will start, about which no one will even know anything without the new Snowden. Only well-known public mass surveillance programs already have a few dozen. So what is the place of law and human rights in all this?