The American Civil Liberties Union announced that it has filed a federal lawsuit against the national security team over the recently exposed telephone surveillance by the National Security Agency. A Verizon customer, the ACLU based what could be a test case in the Supreme Court on constitutionality.
ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer called the program “surely one of the largest surveillance efforts ever launched by a democratic government against its own citizens," reports the LATimes.com. "It is the equivalent of requiring every American to file a daily report with the government of every location they visited, every person they talked to on the phone, the time of each call, and the length of every conversation.”
The order, which came from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and was leaked by Edward Snowden, requires Verizon to turn in all “telephony metadata,” which the ACLU claims “compromises sensitive information about its work,” says LATimes.com. The federal lawsuit requests that the government immediately cease and desist collection of this information.
In the past, the government has managed to have similar cases taken up by the ACLU dismissed on the grounds that litigation would “reveal state secrets,” but according to the NYTimes.com, this case may be different. The large scope of this program and rising outrage over other leaks of government secrets - see, for example, the picture below - may ultimately bring this case to court.