In the first federal court decision to enable a challenge to the surveillance program, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington said the plaintiffs would probably prevail at trial on their claim that the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment right to privacy outweighs the government’s need to gather and analyze the information.
Leon granted a temporary order blocking the government from collecting what’s known as metadata from the Verizon Wireless accounts of the two plaintiffs, conservative legal activist Larry Klayman and Charles Strange, who in court papers said the U.S. government may have intentionally killed his son in Afghanistan. He also required the U.S. to destroy any such information in the NSA’s possession.
Leon froze the order while the government makes a likely appeal “in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues,” according to yesterday’s ruling.
The case marks the first time a district court judge has ruled on the NSA program, disclosed this year in leaks by the former agency contractor Edward Snowden. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews government requests for permission to engage in electronic surveillance of foreign suspects who may be communicating with U.S. citizens, has said the data collection is constitutional.