Civil Society Groups Ask Supreme Court to Resolve Section 702 Surveillance Issues
Three civil society organizations are petitioning the Supreme Court to take up a controversial surveillance program that targets foreigners overseas but incidentally collects communications of U.S. citizens. American Mohamed Osman Mohamud's conviction in a 2013 attempted bombing in Portland, Oregon,…
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was based on information obtained through the Prism program part of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act. The Center for Democracy & Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation and New America's Open Technology Institute said Thursday 702 allows warrantless surveillance on Americans, violating Fourth Amendment rights protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. The petition said the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals' ruling last year against Mohamud "disregarded these significant constitutional defects" and instead "invented a dangerous -- and doctrinally unprecedented -- exception to the warrant requirement." The three-judge panel said since government was targeting a foreign national overseas under the section, no warrant was required to intercept the target's communications and Mohamud's incidentally collected emails (see 1702270066). The section needs to be reauthorized by Congress or it will expire. Lawmakers have been trying to get an estimate on how many Americans' communications are swept up amid resistance from the intelligence community (see 1708030046 and 1707140043).