Ride the Lightning

Wikimedia Joins Others Suing NSA and DOJ Over Surveillance

March 12, 2015

On Tuesday, The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, joined with other rights group, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in suing the National Security Agency, the Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. As naked security reports, the objective is to protect users' privacy and curtail the large-scale search and seizure of Internet communications.

The complaint was filed on March 10, 2015 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. Wikimedia's blog post discusses its reasons for joining the suit challenging upstream mass surveillance, including its belief that the NSA is exceeding the authority granted to it by Congress through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as well as violating the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution.

Interesting to read that the litigants believe that they can prove they have standing to sue – the lack of standing caused a previous challenge to the surveillance under the FAA to be dismissed in Amnesty v. Clapper.

This will certainly be a case to watch closely.

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