Court overturns data collection lawsuit ruling against NSA

By Barry Eitel

SAN FRANCISCO

 A U.S. appeals court ruled in favor of the National Security Agency on Friday by rejecting an earlier ruling that halted the agency’s collection of millions of Americans’ phone records.

The three-judge panel representing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the plaintiff, activist lawyer Larry Klayman, did not sufficiently prove his standing to sue the government.

Klayman, founder of right-leaning policy advocacy group Freedom Watch, sued the NSA for its classified phone metadata collection program that was revealed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.  

A federal judge in December that year ruled in favor of Klayman, deeming the program likely unconstitutional and ordering the NSA to stop the collection.

But the judges Friday decided that Klayman could not prove that the NSA collected his specific records and could not, therefore, sue the agency. The judges sent the decision, which was procedural and did not rule on the constitutionality of the program, back to a lower court for further deliberation.

"Although one could reasonably infer from the evidence presented the government collected plaintiffs' own metadata, one could also conclude the opposite," noted Judge Janice Rogers Brown in the decision, adding that the plaintiffs "fall short of meeting the higher burden of proof required for a preliminary injunction."

The NSA’s program expired in June and Congress revised the initiative, barring the federal government from collecting phone and other electronic records in bulk.

Telecommunications companies such as Verizon will now keep the information and the NSA is required to limit searches to specific requests.

Still, the NSA continues to collect data until private companies completely take over the program by the end of the year.

In another case against the program brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, a New York appeals court in May ruled the collection unlawful and is scheduled to hear arguments next week about whether to force the agency to cease metadata collection.