A federal judge in California ruled on Tuesday that a group of citizens didn't have the right to sue the National Security Agency over its warrantless surveillance programs.
The plaintiffs in the case, Jewel v. NSA, could not prove that they had a right to sue because they could not show that the NSA had collected and analyzed information on specific individuals, said U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, Reuters reported.
But "even if the plaintiffs could establish standing, a potential Fourth Amendment claim would have to be dismissed on the basis that any possible defenses would require impermissible disclosure of state secret information," wrote White.
The plaintiffs couldn't offer specifics of the spying programs because the NSA still hasn't told the public exactly how they work, even after Edward Snowden disclosed their existence.
And even if the plaintiffs could identify specifics, the suit wouldn't be able to go forward because doing so would jeopardize NSA secrets, according to the judge.
The suit was filed in 2008 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and also implicates AT&T, alleging that the company "routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA," reported Common Dreams.
"Agreeing with the government, the court found that the plaintiffs lacked 'standing' to challenge the constitutionality of the program because they could not prove that the surveillance occurred as plaintiffs' alleged," wrote the EFF. "Despite the judge's finding that he could not adjudicate the standing issue without 'risking exceptionally grave damage to national security,' he expressed frustration that he could not fully explain his analysis and reasoning because of the state secrets issue."
It's a similar ruling to that of the 2013 Supreme Court decision Clapper v. Amnesty International, which found that plaintiffs could not bring a suit unless they could provide substantial proof that they were being spied on.
The EFF emphasized that the judge's ruling does not end their case and does not mean that the NSA's operations are legal.
"Judge White's ruling does not end our case. The judge's ruling only concerned Upstream Internet surveillance, not the telephone records collection nor other mass surveillance processes that are also at issue in Jewel," said Kurt Opsahl, deputy legal council at EFF, reported Common Dreams. "We will continue to fight to end NSA mass surveillance."
