The feds are illegally intercepting everybodys emails, lawyer claims. U.S. court says he didnt prove it – PennLive

Is the National Security Agency illegally intercepting your emails?

Elliott J. Schuchardt insists that it is.

A federal appeals court has concluded that he didnt prove it, however.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit reached that conclusion this week in upholding the dismissal of a lawsuit Schuchardt, an attorney, originally filed against President Barack Obama and the NSA in 2014.

Circuit Judge Thomas L. Ambros opinion on the case touches on such issues as domestic spying and has a cast of character that includes Edward Snowden, the internationally-known whistleblower and former CIA employee who leaked highly-classified NSA information.

As outlined by Ambro, Schuchardts allegations read like the plot of a thriller, maybe even the script for an episode of The X-Files.

Schuchardts claim, as relayed by Ambro, is that soon after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks the NSA began collecting massive quantities of email and other data created by U.S. citizens without legal warrants directly from the servers of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Dropbox and Apple.

The supposed collection violated the constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure, Schuchardt insisted. To back his allegations, Schuchardt cited Snowdens disclosures, articles in The Washington Post and The Guardian news outlets and affidavits from former NSA employees, including one who said he developed the technology used for the supposedly unlawful mass interceptions.

The first time U.S. Western District Judge Cathy Bissoon dismissed Schuchardts suit, the circuit judges sent the matter back to her for reconsideration. Bissoon dismissed the case a second time in February 2019 and this time around Ambro agreed with her finding that Schuchardt had failed to rebut the governments evidence that his claims are untrue.

Ambro found that Schuchardt didnt prove that affidavits from his alleged experts on NSA operations were reliable. The news media reports he submitted as evidence constituted only hearsay, the circuit judge agreed. Schuchardts reliance on the documents he claimed came, indirectly, from Snowdens whistleblower disclosures fell short as well, Ambro found.

Schuchardts argument that the Snowden documents are authenticated by the governments admissions that Snowden misappropriated documents also fails, he wrote. Any general admissions by government officials that Snowden stole documents did not authenticate the specific documents Schuchardt submitted to the court.

Ambro noted that federal officials countered Schuchardts claims with evidence including a sworn affidavit from NSA Operations Director Wayne Murphy. In that affdavit, Murphy stated no NSA intelligence-gathering activity involves the bulk collection or storage of all or substantially all of the email or other internet-based communications of all U.S. persons.

The government insisted Murphys statement is backed up by a 2014 report required under the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Bissoon credited the federal governments evidence and reasoned that Schuchardt could not show that his communications would have been targeted and collected, Ambro noted.

So, he found that since Schuchardts evidence was inadmissible in court and the governments evidence stood uncontroverted Bissoon was right to dismiss the suit on grounds that Schuchardt lacked factual standing to keep pursuing it.

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The feds are illegally intercepting everybodys emails, lawyer claims. U.S. court says he didnt prove it - PennLive