Friday, May 02, 2014

The race to bring NSA surveillance to the Supreme Court

The race to bring NSA surveillance to the Supreme Court
There are at least three pending cases against the agency with a shot at making it all the way
Mike Taylor, who lives in Dublin, Georgia, says the National Security Agency has been watching him since 2006. He knows because they communicate with him. "They talk to me on a daily basis," he explains evenly over the phone. "They insult my looks. They insult my intelligence. They use racial slurs against me."
He didn’t know why he was being surveilled, however, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out. When the NSA blew him off with its infamous boilerplate "neither confirm or deny" letter, he filed a lawsuit. Last month, a judge ruled against him.
I found Taylor’s case while sifting through the dozens of federal lawsuits that have been filed against the NSA since former government contractor Edward Snowden started leaking internal documents. Many are written by hand and filed from mental institutions. Most get dismissed for frivolousness, but somehow Taylor got all the way through to a ruling. He even has a chance to appeal.
It’s unlikely that the NSA is spying on Taylor and calling him names. But you could argue that he has a case.   ........

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