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Lone Lawyer Sues Obama, Alleging Illegality of Surveillance Programs

posted by n1 on Friday October 24 2014, @10:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the classified-[redacted]-[redacted]-case-dismissed-[redacted] dept.

AnonTechie writes with an article from Ars Technica:

Justice Department lawyers have asked a federal court in Pittsburgh to dismiss a sweeping lawsuit brought earlier this year by a local lawyer against President Barack Obama and other top intelligence officials.

In a new motion to dismiss filed on Monday, the government told the court that the Pittsburgh lawyer, Elliott Schuchardt, lacked standing to make a claim that his rights under the Fourth Amendment have been violated as a result of multiple ongoing surveillance programs.

Specifically, Schuchardt argued in his June 2014 complaint that both metadata and content of his Gmail, Facebook, and Dropbox accounts were compromised under the PRISM program as revealed in the documents leaked by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Pseudonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @11:52AM

    by Pseudonymous Coward (4624) on Friday October 24 2014, @11:52AM (#109529)

    This doesn't just violate his fourth amendment (prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures) but I can bet you that it has violated his attorney-client privilege at least once.
    And he's not alone in this. Since PRISM wasn't a targeted operation, this means other lawyers and their clients have also had their rights violated.

    Can someone please un-fuck the NSA already?

    NSA spybot keywords: spy extremist weapon conversion trigger mechanism Linux XKEYSCORE encryption RSA

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  • (Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Friday October 24 2014, @12:55PM

    by LaminatorX (14) <laminatorxNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday October 24 2014, @12:55PM (#109544)

    I have a friend who used to do sigint. He signed his emails with "The new Bush record is the bomb!"

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @03:57PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @03:57PM (#109620)

      I like to use random lines from the Talking Heads' Life During Wartime.

  • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Friday October 24 2014, @05:59PM

    by cafebabe (894) on Friday October 24 2014, @05:59PM (#109666) Journal

    A valid argument could be that his clients fear having their Fourth Amendment rights violated via digital communication and and therefore they are not able to exercise privileged communication fully. This would only require one statement from a past or present client. Indeed, a plausible corner case would be a no-win, no-fee case which was lost or narrowly won due to material facts not communicated digitally. That would certainly have standing.

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