Today, the first Snowden disclosures in 2013 feel like a distant memory. The public perception of surveillance has changed dramatically since and, likewise, the battle to shape the legality and logistics of such snooping is continually evolving.

To us, 2015 appeared to be the year where major change would happen whether pro- or anti-surveillance. Experts felt a shift was equally imminent. "I think it's impossible to tell which case will be the one that does it, but I believe that, ultimately, the Supreme Court will have to step in and decide the constitutionality of some of the NSA's practices," Mark Rumold , an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars last year.

The presumed movement would all start with a lawsuit filed by veteran conservative activist Larry Klayman. Filed the day after the initial Snowden disclosures, his lawsuit would essentially put a stop to unchecked NSA surveillance. In January 2015, he remained the only plaintiff whose case had won when fighting for privacy against the newly understood government monitoring. (Of course, it was a victory in name only—the judicial order in Klayman was stayed pending the government’s appeal at the time).

With January 2016 mere hours away, however, the significance of Klayman is hard to decipher. The past year saw an end to the phone metadata program authorized under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, but it also saw the government flex its surveillance muscle in other ways, maintaining or establishing other avenues to keep its fingers on the pulse. That activity dramatically impacted Klayman and other cases we anticipated shaping surveillance in 2015, and we can admit our optimism was severely dashed. In total, zero of the cases we profiled last January got anywhere close to the nine Supreme Court justices in the last 12 months.

Tomorrow we'll bring you five new (and hopefully more active) cases that we’ve got our eye on for 2016, but let’s review what’s happened to our 2015 list first.

The grandaddy of them all

Case name: Klayman v. Obama

Status: Pending at the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals for the second time.

This case is notable for two reasons. First, it was filed the day after the first published disclosures from the Snowden leaks. Second, the case marks a rare win against the government.

US District Judge Richard Leon ruled in favor of plaintiff and attorney Larry Klayman in December 2013, ordering that the NSA’s Bulk Telephony Metadata Program be immediately halted. However, he famously stayed his order pending an appeal to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. The DC Circuit reversed his order in August 2015 and sent it back down to Judge Leon. The DC circuit found (as has often been the case) that Klayman did not have standing as there was not enough evidence that his records had been collected.

Judge Leon next suggested that the case be amended to include a specific plaintiff that had been a customer of Verizon Business Services, not Verizon Wireless. That person, California lawyer J.J. Little, was soon found and added to the case. The judge then ruled on November 9, 2015 that the government be ordered to immediately stop collecting Little’s records. As Judge Leon wrote:

With the Government’s authority to operate the Bulk Telephony Metadata Program quickly coming to an end, this case is perhaps the last chapter in the Judiciary’s evaluation of this particular Program’s compatibility with the Constitution. It will not, however, be the last chapter in the ongoing struggle to balance privacy rights and national security interests under our Constitution in an age of evolving technological wizardry. Although this Court appreciates the zealousness with which the Government seeks to protect the citizens of our Nation, that same Government bears just as great a responsibility to protect the individual liberties of those very citizens.

The government again appealed the decision back to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. Weeks later though, the phone metadata program authorized under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act ended on November 29, 2015. As such, the government said in December 2015 that it will soon formally appeal Judge Leon’s decision, largely on the basis that it’s now moot.

Phone metadata fallout

Case name: ACLU v. Clapper

Status: Sent back down to the Southern District of New York, likely to be dismissed as moot

In a landmark May 2015 decision, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the bulk telephone metadata program was not authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Again, that program halted shortly after in November 2015. Today it’s likely that the lower court will soon dismiss the case as moot.

"The statutes to which the government points have never been interpreted to authorize anything approaching the breadth of the sweeping surveillance at issue here," the appeals court wrote last spring.

At the time, the court also noted that the Patriot Act gives the government wide powers to acquire all types of private records on Americans as long as they are "relevant" to an investigation. But according to the court, the government is going too far when it comes to acquiring, via a subpoena, the metadata of every telephone call made to and from the United States.

As 2nd Circuit judges concluded:

The records demanded are not those of suspects under investigation, or of people or businesses that have contact with such subjects, or of people or businesses that have contact with others who are in contact with the subjects—they extend to every record that exists, and indeed to records that do not yet exist, as they impose a continuing obligation on the recipient of the subpoena to provide such records on an ongoing basis as they are created. The government can point to no grand jury subpoena that is remotely comparable to the real‐time data collection undertaken under this program.

After the 2nd Circuit, the case was sent back down to the Southern District of New York, which has yet to schedule any arguments in this case for 2016.

Ridiculously slow

Case name: First Unitarian Church v. National Security Agency

Status: Pending in Northern District Court of California

Unlike Klayman and similar cases, First Unitarian Church v. National Security Agency was filed in 2013 on behalf of a number of wide-ranging religious and non-profit groups. This collective runs the gamut, representing Muslims, gun owners, marijuana legalization advocates, and even the Free Software Foundation. In total, the suit represents the broadest challenge to the metadata collection program so far.

First Unitarian Church takes the bulk collection of data and questions how it may reveal an individual's associations:

Plaintiffs’ associations and political advocacy efforts, as well as those of their members and staffs, are chilled by the fact that the Associational Tracking Program creates a permanent record of all of Plaintiffs’ telephone communications with their members and constituents, among others.

The plaintiffs demands that the metadata program be declared unconstitutional and formally shut down. In the latest chapter, the plaintiffs’ attempt to hold a court hearing regarding their attempt for summary judgment was denied in December 2015.

Overall within this past year, the docket only advanced slightly. Oakland-based US District Judge Jeffrey White did not hold a single hearing in the case, and nothing is scheduled so far for 2016. Like the previous two cases to watch from 2015, this case is also likely to be dismissed as moot given that the phone metadata program under Section 215 is no longer operational.