A federal district court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the National Security Agency over its mass surveillance program.

Ashley Gorski, a staff attorney with the ACLU national security project told The Guardian the mass spying program was innately harmful, arguing it violates “our clients’ constitutional rights to privacy, freedom of speech, and freedom of association, and it poses a grave threat to a free internet and a free society.”

But Judge TS Ellis III said the suit relied on “the subjective fear of surveillance” because the NSA did not admit to having collected any of the information it was alleged to have collected by the ACLU, the Guardian reported.

Mr. Ellis admitted that requiring enough evidence to convict the NSA of illegal spying was difficult, regardless of whether or not the spying had occurred.

ACLU National Security Project staff attorney Patrick Toomey blasted the decision, saying the court had “wrongly insulated the NSA’s spying from meaningful judicial scrutiny.”

The plaintiffs included Wikipedia, the Nation magazine, Amnesty International and six other organizations, who alleged that the interception and storage of their communications by the NSA violated their constitutional protections against unwarranted search and seizure.

Mr. Ellis is a former U.S. Navy aviator. In 2006 he dismissed a suit brought against the CIA by a German man who accused the agency of abducting and torturing him as part of the US “extraordinary rendition” program. Mr. Ellis dismissed that case on the grounds that a trial would risk national security.

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