Jewel v. National Security Agency

Litigation history

District court case

In 2008, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) initiated a class action lawsuit against the government on behalf of aggrieved citizens, with one named Carolyn Jewel volunteering to be named in the suit. The government moved to dismiss the suit because the plaintiffs could not prove direct personal injury from the surveillance, and thus lacked standing to sue, while the surveillance program itself could remain confidential under the state secrets privilege. The case was first heard at the District Court for the Northern District of California. Judge Vaughn Walker dismissed the suit in January 2010, holding that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing because their claims amounted to a "general grievance" against the government, with no evidence of direct personal injury.

The EFF appealed this ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Circuit court ruling

On appeal, in December 2011 the Ninth Circuit initially reversed the District Court's dismissal of the complaint and remanded the case back to the lower court to further determine the validity of the government's state secrets privilege claim. The case was thus returned to the District Court for the Northern District of California but with few new developments for about the next 18 months.

Subsequent district court actions

In the meantime, NSA whistleblower William Binney testified in July 2012 in support of the EFF, claiming that the NSA was "purposefully violating the Constitution". The NSA's mass surveillance program then became a matter of widespread public knowledge upon the revelations by Edward Snowden in June 2013.

In July 2013, District Court Judge Jeffrey White rejected the government's claim of state secrets privilege and allowed the EFF class action suit to continue, further holding that the surveillance program constituted a search process that in turn required a warrant for each search, per the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.

Later in 2013 the court ordered the NSA to explain the perceived impact of the recent Snowden revelations on the Jewel case and on its general national security efforts. In December 2013, the government again claimed the state secrets privilege and declassified documents detailing its process while reaching this decision. The NSA in the meantime was destroying the relevant records, because it was required under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to delete any such records after a proscribed period.

In March 2014, Judge White imposed a temporary restraining order, requiring the NSA to halt the destruction of evidence until a final resolution of the Jewel case. In June 2014, the EFF requested an emergency hearing requesting that the court enforce the temporary restraining order, after discovering that the government had continued the destruction of evidence. The NSA filed a counter-motion claiming that altering its process of deleting records and revealing the targets of its ongoing surveillance operation would have severe consequences "including the possible suspension of the Section 702 program and potential loss of access to lawfully collected signals intelligence information on foreign intelligence targets."

In February 2015, Judge White dismissed the latest motion by the EFF, accepting the NSA's argument that the requirements placed upon the agency would engender the "impermissible disclosure of state secret information." White also held that the plaintiffs did not have standing to pursue their claims. This procedural ruling allowed White to avoid addressing the constitutionality of the NSA's mass surveillance program.

Upon the disclosure of more information about the NSA's surveillance methods, the EFF filed another motion in May 2017 requesting that the agency disclose information about surveillance conducted against Carolyn Jewel and the other plaintiffs. Judge White granted this motion and ordered the government to hand over the information. However, the NSA filed a motion in opposition to that order, claiming once again that the plaintiffs lacked the standing to sue. After further arguments, the District Court accepted this argument in April 2019.

The EFF appealed that ruling to the Ninth Circuit. In a memorandum opinion, that court ruled in favor of the NSA, once again on the matter of standing. In June 2022, the EFF made a final request to the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case, but that court rejected the request and did not grant certiorari.

Impact

The ultimate outcome of Jewel v. National Security Agency is that the U.S. government was able to avoid the Fourth Amendment implications of its mass surveillance program via procedural arguments about the need to keep its methods secret, while claiming that individual citizens cannot prove direct harm from the program. However, citizens have been unable to demonstrate standing because the NSA has argued successfully that the evidence needed for that task must remain secret, thus creating a Catch-22 situation. This has generated some criticism, because while the NSA's argument could possibly be justified under old evidence-gathering processes, the Jewel case did not address the much easier collection of personal information enabled by modern Internet and telecommunications technologies.