The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to give Wikimedia a chance to legally challenge the NSA's mass surveillance as being unconstitutional. The government has previously argued that the NSA's Upstream warrantless spying is authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. [...]
The ruling yesterday reversed a lower court's ruling which found Wikimedia, which publishes the internet behemoth Wikipedia, couldn't prove the NSA's "Upstream" surveillance program was secretly monitoring its communications, vacuuming the communications right off the internet backbones – even with leaked Snowden documents showing Wikipedia as an NSA target.
[...] due to the sheer size of Wikimedia, the judges found that the NSA probably had seized at least some of their communications.
—Computerworld (hyperlinks in original)
"Wikimedia has plausibly alleged that its communications travel all of the roads that a communication can take, and that the NSA seizes all of the communications along at least one of those roads," U.S. Circuit Judge Albert Diaz wrote. "Thus, at least at this stage of the litigation, Wikimedia has standing to sue for a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And, because Wikimedia has self-censored its speech and sometimes forgone electronic communications in response to Upstream surveillance, it also has standing to sue for a violation of the First Amendment."
Further reading:
Wikipedia article on Upstream
Wikipedia article on Albert Diaz
Additional coverage:
Previous stories:
US Spies Still Won't Tell Congress the Number of Americans Caught in Dragnet
Judge Tosses Wikimedia's Anti-NSA Lawsuit Because Wikipedia It Isn't Big Enough
Wikipedia's Lawsuit Against NSA Internet Vacuum has First Day in Court
Deeper Dive into EFF's Motion on Backbone Surveillance
(Score: 4, Touché) by hemocyanin on Sunday May 28 2017, @11:48PM
At last some common sense coming from the courts. Next up, SCOTUS.