In American Civil Liberties Union v. Clapper, 13 Civ. 3994 (WHP) (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 27. 2013), the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found constitutional the ongoing program of the National Security Agency and FBI to obtain telephony metadata in bulk from telephone carriers and Internet service providers. In so doing, the court ruled opposite to the U.S. District Court for the D.C. Circuit in Klayman v. Obama, Civ. No. 13-0851(RJL) (D.C. Dec. 16, 2013).
In last month’s column, I criticized the Klayman court for its fundamental misunderstanding of a user’s privacy rights in the telephony metadata pertaining to his or her telephone calls. The Clapper court, by contrast, understood that those privacy concerns did not rise to constitutional rights, but led to political questions to be settled by Congress and the president. In this month’s article, we’ll look at Clapper.
