On the first of the month, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) published “Overview of Constitutional Challenges to NSA Collection Activities and Recent Developments.” The report reviews the two main NSA programs that have come under public scrutiny since the Snowden leaks–the bulk metadata collection program and the interception of Internet-based foreign communications–and, as the title suggests, explores the most predominate constitutional challenges to these programs.
Constitutional challenges . . . have arisen in the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)] and [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR)] as part of those courts’ roles in approving the parameters of these collection activities. . . . [C]hallenges have [also] been brought in traditional federal courts as civil actions by plaintiffs asserting an injury or in criminal proceedings by defendants who have been notified that evidence against them was obtained or derived from collection under Section 702 [of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).]
The fairly brief report uses cases such as Clapper v. Amnesty International (see also here) and, to a lesser extent, ACLU v. Clapper and Klayman v. Obama to review the legal issues presented by these programs.
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