In two key cases, activists now ask judge to order NSA metadata preservation

In a new federal court filing, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has asked for a preservation order similar to one that it already received years ago in one National Security Agency-related case (Jewel v. NSA) to be extended to a second case (First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles et al v. NSA) that the group filed after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden began leaking NSA documents.

Such an order compels the government to retain everything it collected even after the standard five-year deletion period, so that the plaintiffs can pursue civil discovery and if necessary, prove that their calls were among those swept up.

In the filing to Judge Jeffrey White, the EFF also said that it wants the United States government to “disclose the steps it has taken to preserve evidence and to disclose whether it has destroyed telephone records, Internet metadata records, Internet or telephone content data, or any other evidence potentially relevant to these lawsuits.”