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The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday dismissed the National Security Agency’s request for a rehearing of a lawsuit relating to Internet traffic monitoring, leaving in place a lower court’s ruling exercising its “national security privilege” to dismiss the lawsuit.
The NSA’s oversight was challenged by the Wikimedia Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute. The Supreme Court’s dismissal of Wikimedia’s request for review (formally known as “certoriari”) was confirmed in a long list of decisions released yesterday.
“As a final development in our case, Wikimedia Foundation v. United States NSAthe U.S. Supreme Court has denied our petition to review the National Security Agency’s (NSA) extensive oversight of internet communications and activity. ,” the Wikimedia Foundation said yesterday.
The lawsuit challenged the NSA’s “upstream” surveillance program. In this program, “NSA will systematically search the content of his Internet traffic to and from the United States, including personal emails, messages and web communications of Americans,” the Wikimedia Foundation said. . “The Supreme Court’s refusal to grant our petition is a blow to the individual’s right to privacy and free expression,” said James Bouatti, legal director of the Wikimedia Foundation. are two cornerstones of society and a building block of Wikipedia.
Lawsuits pose a ‘risk of leakage of state secrets’
A decision of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in September 2021 upheld the U.S. District Court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit. As the Court of Appeals decision noted, the district court ruled that Wikimedia was ineligible to pursue the case and that “further litigation would unduly jeopardize the disclosure of state secrets.”
“While the district court was erroneous in granting summary judgment to the government on Wikimedia’s position, we agree that the state’s privilege of secrecy requires the termination of this case,” the Court of Appeals said. A panel of judges for the Fourth Circuit said in a 2-1 decision. The Fourth Circuit then dismissed Wikimedia’s motion. to the bank With a rehearing before all judges in the court, Wikimedia asked the Supreme Court for review in August 2022.
Wikimedia’s petition for Supreme Court review stated that the Court of Appeals “was erroneous in dismissing the case on the basis of state secret prerogative, and that the Court should instead exclude secret evidence and proceed with the case.” We should have allowed it.” At the time, groups disputing NSA surveillance said:
Wikimedia and fellow plaintiffs argued that they could prove their claims based on public government information about the surveillance program.
“The time has passed for the Supreme Court to curb the government’s widespread use of secrecy to avoid accountability in court. Upstream surveillance is not secret, and the government’s own public information is evidence of that.” The National Security Project said when the petition for Supreme Court review was filed: “Every day, the NSA siphons Americans’ communications off the Internet backbone and feeds them into surveillance systems, violating privacy and exposing them. Courts can and should determine whether this warrantless digital search network complies with the Constitution.”
