bulk collection NSA pen register policy Section 215 surveillance Verizon
Ninth Circuit Sends NSA Surveillance Case Back to Lower Court
A Federal Appeals court has remanded a case challenging the NSA's bulk collection of telephone records. In Smith v. Obama, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals instructed the lower court to consider the impact of the USA Freedom Act, which ended the bulk data collection program. EPIC, joined by thirty-three technical experts and legal scholars, filed an amicus brief in the case, arguing that modern communications systems are "entirely unlike the telephone network of the 1970s" and that a 1977 case concerning "pen registers" no longer applied. EPIC also challenged the NSA bulk collection program in a petition to the Supreme Court.