The groups allege the NSA violated their rights by collecting their phone records. Lawsuit against NSA expands

Nineteen organizations are joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a lawsuit against the National Security Agency, alleging they violated their rights by collecting their phone records.

“You don’t have to have anything to hide in order to be incensed by the state taking your money to watch everything you’re doing,” Shahid Buttar, the executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, one of the plaintiffs, said at a teleconference Tuesday afternoon. “[The] surveillance is offensive in itself.”


The complaint, “First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA”, which was filed Tuesday, accused the NSA of violating the plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to freedom of association and Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure — among others other counts.

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Aside from the implications for privacy, the groups involved in the lawsuit, many of them political advocacy organizations and gun rights advocates, are concerned about the First Amendment issues that it could bring up. At the teleconference, Buttar, along with two other plaintiffs from the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles and the Calguns Foundations, expressed concern that their members (and the general public) will no longer feel free to associate with certain controversial organizations, if their association with the group can be easily discovered by the government.

“The issue for [Calgun] is that it’s already hard enough to be a gun owner….Californians aren’t fond of people who carry arms,” Gene Hoffman, Calguns foundation chairman said. “The idea that people that people want to be able to advocate for things that matter to them…is important. Knowing that big brother’s watching means that most people [who you] won’t think of as being gun owners, classic Democrats and those who don’t fit the mold,… are more likely to be afraid of the government keeping record.”

More importantly, the plaintiffs want the case out in the open, to ensure a fair process.

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“We think that the right place to determine whether the government is acting legally and constitutionally is in the public…court system,” EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn said. “[An internal or one sided] court process isn’t the way…Anyone can convince themselves that what they’re doing is legal but that’s not how it works in this country. We’re alleging either that the statute doesn’t authorize what it is they’re doing or that if it does authorize what they’re doing, it’s unconstitutional.”