Klayman v. Obama

Klayman v. Obama
Case Title	Klayman v. Obama
Date	2013/12/16
Appealed	No
Personal Information
Taxonomy
Link to Ruling
Country/Jurisdiction	United States
State or Province
Regulatory Bodies
Decided	Yes
Arbitrator	US District Court
Related Laws	Constitution - Amendment IV, Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978

Short Summary

The plaintiffs, subscribers of Verizon Wireless, brought suit against the NSA,the DOJ, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, General Keith Alexander, and Verizon Communication. The plaintiffs allege that the government is conducting a "secret and illegal government scheme to intercept vast quantities of domestic telephonic communications"

Background

On June 5, 2013, the Guardian first published an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which required Verizon to produce all domestic telephone call detail records to the National Security Agency ("NSA") on an ongoing basis. This collection was not based on any particularized suspicion of wrongdoing, all call records were collected in bulk from Verizon every day. Specifically, the FISA order required that Verizon turn over “all call detail records or 'telephony metadata' created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.” Once revealed, the government confirmed the existence of the Verizon order and of the telephone metadata program.

Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978 following the discovery by the Church Committee of decades of domestic surveillance by the Intelligence Community. The Act prohibited domestic surveillance except with the approval of a newly created court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Under the FISA, the FISC could only grant orders if the government established probable cause to believe that the target of surveillance was foreign powers or agents of a foreign power.

However, Congress modified the FISA in the 2001 USA PATRIOT and the 2006 Patriot Act Reauthorization. Specifically, Congress authorized the FBI in Section 215 to apply for a FISC order compelling businesses to produce "tangible things" relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism. Section 215 provided that businesses who received these orders could challenge them in the FISC. We now know that the FISC has since 2006 issued orders that require major telephone companies, like Verizon, to provide all telephone call detail records to the NSA.

In this case, the Plaintiff, a Verizon Wireless customer, brought suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of D.C., alleging that the government is conducting a "secret and illegal scheme to intercept and analyze vast quantities of domestic telephone communications and of communications from the Internet and electronic service providers." The Plaintiff sought a preliminary injunction requiring the NSA to stop collecting his telephone call detail records. The court granted the Plaintiff's preliminary injunction, finding that the program likely violated the Fourth Amendment, but subsequently stayed the decision pending review by the D.C. Circuit.

Decision

On December 16, 2013, US Federal Judge Richard J. Leon ruled that bulk collection of American telephone metadata likely violates the Constitution of the United States. The judge wrote, "I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary' invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval ... Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment."