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November 18, 2015 12:00 pm

Terrorism Case Challenges FISA Spying

An anonymous reader writes: As we've come to terms with revelations of U.S. surveillance over the past couple years, we've started to see lawsuits spring up challenging the constitutionality of the spying. Unfortunately, it's slow; one of the difficulties is that it's hard to gain standing in court if you haven't been demonstrably harmed. A case before the 9th Circuit Appeals Court is now testing the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act in a big way, and whatever the outcome, it's likely to head to the Supreme Court. The case itself is long and complicated; it centers on a teenager who joined a plot to detonate a huge bomb in Portland, Oregon in 2010, but his co-conspirators turned out to be undercover FBI agents. The case history is worth a read, and raises questions about entrapment and impressionable kids. However, the issue now being argued in court is simpler: the defendant was a U.S. citizen, and the FBI used FISA powers to access his communications without a warrant. Crucially, they failed to notify the defendant of this before trial — something they're legally required to do. This gives him and his lawyers standing to challenge the constitutionality of the law in the first place. It's a difficult puzzle, with no clear answer, but oral arguments could begin as soon as January for one of the most significant cases yet to challenge the U.S. government's surveillance of its own citizens.

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