14 DAY TRIAL // The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) isn’t backing down from the fight against the National Security Agency and has filed an appeal against a decision taken last week ruling the NSA metadata collection as legal.
The ACLU has been trying to get the United States court to admit that what the National Security Agency has been doing for years is illegal. Last week, a federal judge said that the entire metadata collection process was completely legal, arguing that people chose to share their private lives online, which was worse than what the NSA was doing.
Of course, in his ruling, the judge completely disregarded the fact that there was a huge difference between sharing something about oneself online and having an intelligence agency violate your privacy by collecting data about you.
The judge also said in his ruling that there was no evidence that the government had used any of the telephony metadata for any other purpose than fighting off terrorism.
However, just a couple of weeks ago, one of the members of the White House panel charged with reviewing NSA’s programs came forth and stated that they hadfound no proof that any type of attack was fended off thanks to the metadata collection program.
The ACLU is using this particular statement in its case. “Further, as the President’s own review panel recently observed, there’s no evidence that this dragnet program was essential to preventing any terrorist attack. We categorically reject the notion that the threat of terrorism requires citizens of democratic countries to surrender the freedoms that make democracies worth defending,” ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said.
Depending on what the appeal court decides, the case could end up on the table of the judges forming the Supreme Court.