Judge urges quick action in NSA-spying challenge
'The clock is running and there isn't much time'
Larry Klayman
Warning he would not allow the government’s spying on millions of Americans through their cell phones to continue unfettered, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday indicated he’s anxious to move forward quickly in a case that challenges the National Security Agency’s program.
Klayman told WND after Wednesday’s hearing that the judge advised him to request an expedited mandate from the appellate court and said he could “proceed right now.” Klayman said the judge also advised him to amend the complaint to address concerns raised by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The judge said he would not let the spying continue.
In a blog at Politico, Josh Gerstein said that in an hour-long hearing, Leon repeatedly urged Klayman to take steps to allow the case to move forward quickly by asking a federal appeals court to formally relinquish control over the appeal.
The NSA program, which collects in bulk data on phone calls, is scheduled to shut down at the end of November because of a change made by Congress. Lawmakers ordered a transition to a new procedure in which telephone companies will collect the data and make it available to the government rather than having the government do the collecting.
“The clock is running and there isn’t much time between now and November 29,” Leon told Klayman, Gerstein reported. “This court believes there are millions and millions of Americans whose constitutional rights have been and are being violated, but the window … for action is very small. … It’s time to move.”
Klayman also told WND the judge instructed Justice Department attorneys to make sure they were available at a moment’s notice when he wants to move on the case.
Support attorney Larry Klayman as he mobilizes millions of freedom-loving Americans from all over the country to stop President Obama’s spying on U.S. citizens and to preserve our freedoms!
Leon issued an injunction halting the NSA program in 2013, but he stayed it while the government appealed.
Two years later, Klayman has gone back to Leon asking him to lift the stay and impose the injunction because of the recalcitrant appeals court.
Just days ago, that court moved to overturn the injunction because Klayman had not shown his data specifically had been taken by the government. But the court also allowed Leon to rule on discovery in the case.
Leon pointedly noted the appeals court did not undermine his determination that the program likely is unconstitutional.
According to a report in National Law Journal, the appeals court had cited the complaint’s reference to Verizon Wireless, when the government data program was set up to address Verizon Business Services.
Klayman told WND he would be seeking the right customer of that network to add to the amended complaint.
Leon also warned the government he would be unhappy with any evidence that they were trying to “run the clock out” on the case.
A large part of the case is over the NSA program’s secrecy. The appeals court said the plaintiffs couldn’t specifically prove their own telephone records were seized by the government, so they couldn’t sue.
But they cannot obtain access to such evidence without a case pending.
Klayman said the case was the result of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about the government’s secret spying on Americans.
In a recent commentary for WND, Klayman explained that the appellate judges, David Sentelle, Janice Rogers Brown and Steven Williams, are allowing Leon to review whether discovery supports the idea “the NSA had actually accessed Verizon cell phone telephonic records and whether we had sued the correct Verizon company.”
He quoted from the earlier ruling from Leon, who said, “The NSA has collected and analyzed [plaintiffs'] telephony metadata and will continue to operate the program consistent with FISC opinions and orders.”
Klayman accused the appeals court of acting politically, rather than judicially, and explained the NSA “was forced to reveal … that the intelligence agencies routinely use their spy programs to spy on innocent Americans and presumable coerce them into doing what the government wants.”
Klayman told WND he’s confident of prevailing “ultimately.”
No matter what else results, he said, people are now engaged in the issue and watching the judges for their opinions.
Leon’s 2013 ruling said the NSA program appears to run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, and the Justice Department failed to show that collecting the metadata on telephone calls helped to stop terrorist attacks.
Snowden blew the whistle on the agency’s vacuum-cleaner approach to data collection, called “bulk telephony metadata.” That was earlier in 2013, and Snowden has been living in exile in Russia as a wanted man by the U.S. government ever since.
Two of America’s influential civil-rights groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have sided with Klayman.
The data that the NSA collects, they explained in a brief, “reveals political affiliation, religious practices and peoples’ most intimate associations.”
“It reveals who calls a suicide prevention line and who calls their elected official; who calls the local tea-party office and who calls Planned Parenthood.”
The brief said “the relevant fact for whether an expectation of privacy exists is that the comprehensive telephone records the government collects – not just the records of a few calls over a few days but all of a person’s calls over many years – reveals highly personal information about the person and her life.”
Copyright 2015 WND
http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/judge-urges-quick-action-in-nsa-spying-challenge/
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