ACLU sues government over use of NSA surveillance in criminal cases

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit, asking that the US government answer questions about its policy of notifying criminal defendants when they were monitored through the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

The “lawsuit aims to reveal how the government justified keeping defendants in the dark about evidence based on NSA surveillance, and what the policy is today,” ACLU Staff Attorney Patrick Toomey said. The civil liberties advocacy group had challenged the law authorizing NSA surveillance, but the Supreme Court dismissed the case earlier in 2013, saying the ACLU could not prove it had been subject of the surveillance programs. It’s clear that the government is using NSA surveillance information in criminal cases, as evidenced by congressional testimony by FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and statements from Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the ACLU said in the lawsuit. Both have defended NSA surveillance programs by citing examples of cases where surveillance has aided criminal investigations.