The Supreme Court has denied a petition by a civil liberties group called EPIC challenging the mass domestic meta-data surveillance program that Edward Snowden revealed. In the post I'm linking here, a lawyer predicted this outcome... ...based on the conclusion that either Congress intended to preclude customers from bringing statutory challenges to Section 215 orders altogether or Congress intended to permit such challenges (such as the ACLU’s) in district court under the Administrative Procedure Act. It would not be necessary for the Court to choose between these two options, because either way mandamus would not be appropriate.
In other words, it is possible that the reason the Supreme Court denied EPIC's petition is because lawmakers have set things up so that YOU, mere citizen, have absolutely no right whatsoever to challenge the legality of the mass surveillance in a court of law. The phone company has the right to raise legal questions about this mass meta-data surveillance, but they haven't. As long as they choose not to, it can continue to go on whether you like it or not and regardless of whether or not it is either constitutional or legal. YOU, mere citizen, have no right to challenge government spying. |