Since the Edward Snowden leaks first started, many have called him and Glenn Greenwald narcissists (as if that changed the dragnet surveillance they exposed).
If that’s right, I can think of nothing more narcissistic than ACLU, which is a Verizon customer, suing the government for collecting their call records and chilling their ability to engage in activism.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a constitutional challenge to a surveillance program under which the National Security Agency vacuums up information about every phone call placed within, from, or to the United States. The lawsuit argues that the program violates the First Amendment rights of free speech and association as well as the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment. The complaint also charges that the dragnet program exceeds the authority that Congress provided through the Patriot Act.
“This dragnet program is surely one of the largest surveillance efforts ever launched by a democratic government against its own citizens,” said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. “It is the equivalent of requiring every American to file a daily report with the government of every location they visited, every person they talked to on the phone, the time of each call, and the length of every conversation. The program goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act and represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy.”
Here’s the complaint.
In addition to this suit, Jeff Merkley and others are submitting a bill to force the government to release its secret law.