Group items tagged

A federal judge has affirmed the legality of the U.S. government's bulk phone and email data collection of foreign nationals living outside the country in denying an Mohamed Mohamud's motion to dismiss his terrorism conviction. It was the first legal challenge to the government's bulk data-collection program of non-U.S. citizens living overseas after revelations about massive, warrantless surveillance were made public by former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden. The program also sweeps up information about U.S. citizens who have contact with overseas suspects, but such surveillance has been considered incidental. Lawyers for Mohamud tried to show the program violated his constitutional rights and was more broadly unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge Garr King on Tuesday denied that effort. The ruling also upheld Mohamud's conviction on terrorism charges. In his decision, King rejected the argument from Mohamud's attorneys that prosecutors failed to notify Mohamud of information derived under the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act until he was already convicted.

King held that Mohamud's most persuasive argument was that, even if the original surveillance were lawful, the subsequent use of that information on a U.S. citizen required a warrant. Previous federal appeals court rulings have said that the government needs a warrant to test pills seized in an unrelated search or to search a computer for more information that the warrant sought. Those rulings, the defense argued, meant King should apply the same standard to the evidence seized. But King disagreed. "I do not find any significant additional intrusion," King wrote. "Thus, subsequent querying of (collected data), even if U.S. person identifiers are used, is not a separate search and does not make (such surveillance) unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment."