A U.S. district judge ruled that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) could continue its lawsuit objecting to the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program using the nation’s electronic communications providers including AT&T. “The lawsuit may continue, [Judge Jeffrey] White said, because the ‘procedural mechanism’ of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ‘preempts application of the state secrets privilege,'” wrote Declan McCullagh for CNET, July 8, 2013.
The EFF is attempting to show that the surveillance is illegal on constitutional grounds violating the First and Fourth Amendments. Judge White also ruled that the risk to national security may still prove too great to reveal the scope of the surveillance program. (Wired, July 8, 2013, by David Kravets)
EFF hailed the ruling, “The court rightly found that the traditional legal system can determine the legality of the mass, dragnet surveillance of innocent Americans and rejected the government’s invocation of the state secrets privilege to have the case dismissed,” said Cindy Cohn. (EFF, July 8, 2013)