The Charity & Security Network (C&SN) and four other organizations have joined a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) against the National Security Agency (NSA) over the unconstitutional collection of bulk telephone call records. The lawsuit, originally filed in June, argues that the tracking program violates the First Amendment, which protects the freedom to associate and express political views as a group.
The lawsuit comes after The Guardian revealed that the NSA has been collecting phone records and other “meta-data” on American citizens. This data could be used by the government to gain unprecedented insight into a group’s or individual’s associations. According to EFF Legal Director, Cindy Cohn, “The First Amendment guarantees the freedom to associate and express political views as a group. The NSA undermines that right when it collects, without any particular target, the phone records of innocent Americans and the organizations in which they participate.”
“Our ability to provide humanitarian assistance to civilians in crisis, engage parties in armed conflict to build peace and carry on other projects is constrained by overbroad national security laws,” Kay Guinane, Director of C&SN, said. “Now, after learning that our members and operations are the subject of intrusive government surveillance, we are pleased to join this lawsuit and ask the courts to put an end to these violations of our First Amendment rights.”
See related: NSA Surveillance and its Civil Society Implications