Wikipedia is suing the NSA over online spying

The nonprofit behind Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, is suing the National Security Agency and the Department of Justice over a government surveillance program. The suit challenges a program that collects databy tapping into the infrastructure, or backbone, the Web is built on.

"We are asking the court to order an end to the NSA's dragnet surveillance of Internet traffic," Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales wrote in a New York Times opinion piece about the suit.

The Justice Department spokesperson said the agency isreviewing the complaint. TheNSA did not immediately respond a request for comment about the suit.

The suit allegesthat the government has been tappinginto cables that are part of the Internet's infrastructure, a practice often called "Upstream" collection, which violates the First and Fourth Amendments, according to a blog post from Wikimedia.

Such programs have been targeted in other lawsuits,including the long-running Jewel v. NSA case, which was originallybased on documents from aAT&T technician in San Francisco.Some cases about government surveillance have either been thrown out or stalled after failing to prove they were specifically targetedby thegovernment surveillance programs.

But that may be less of an issue for Wikimedia, which has based its case largely on informationdisclosed byNSA contractor Edward Snowden. Some Snowden documentsappearedto showthat the government is tapping into cables that connect the United States to the rest of the online world. One government slide disclosed by Snowdensuggested that Wikipedia and its userswere targeted as part of government surveillance programs, the lawsuit alleges.

However, there may be other legal hurdles. Last month, Jewel v. NSA hit a significant roadblock when a federal judge sided with the government's state secret defense -- ruling that the plaintiffscould not win their challenge over NSA tapping of the Internet backbone without disclosing information that would harm national security.

The type and amount of data collected as part of these programs are unclear. But the data could reveal details about people's browsing history, scaring somefrom using the Internet freely, privacy advocates have argued.

By tapping the backbone of the internet, the NSA is straining the backbone of democracy, Wikimedia Foundation executive director Lila Tretikov said in a blog post about the suit. Wikipedia is founded on the freedoms of expression, inquiry, and information. By violating our users privacy, the NSA is threatening the intellectual freedom that is central to peoples ability to create and understand knowledge.

The American Civil Liberties Union is representing plaintiffs inWikimedia v. NSA, a group that includesHuman Rights Watch, Amnesty International USA, Global Fund for Women, and The Nation Magazine among others.

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Wikipedia is suing the NSA over online spying