Appeals court in NYC reinstates lawsuit challenging US right to eavesdrop on overseas chats

[alp227]

Source: Associated Press

NEW YORK — A lawsuit challenging a law that lets the United States eavesdrop on overseas communications more widely and with less judicial oversight than in the past was reinstated Monday by a federal appeals court that said new rules regarding surveillance had put lawyers, journalists and human rights groups in a “lose-lose situation.”

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it took no position on the merits of the lawsuit brought by those in jobs that require them to speak with people overseas, saying only that the plaintiffs had legal standing to bring it against the latest version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl in Manhattan had sided with the government in a 2009 ruling, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue since none of them could show they were subject to the surveillance. He said Americans’ fears that their conversations would be monitored and their rights violated were “purely subjective.”

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/appeals_court_in_nyc_reinstates_lawsuit_challenging_us_right_to_eavesdrop_on_overseas_chats/2011/03/21/ABx7yc6_story.html

[Luminous Animal]

1. A link to the ACLU with a timeline

http://www.aclu.org/national-security/amnesty-et-al-v-blair