Big Brother and America’s judicial system

By Robert A. Vella

In a court decision which could have been copied verbatim from George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the District of Columbia court of appeals ruled against a man who had sued the National Security Agency (NSA) for illegally collecting his cell phone records.  Such police state practices violate constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures (4th Amendment) and possibly other Bill of Rights precepts which presumably constitute the foundation of U.S. law.

The court attempted to justify its action by stating that the plaintiff, lawyer Larry Klayman, could not prove that the NSA had collected his cell phone records.  However, neither the D.C. appeals court, nor the lower federal court where this case was initially tried, had granted the plaintiff the authority to subpoena the NSA to produce those records in question.

What the D.C. court essentially said to Mr. Klayman was this:

You have no case because you have no evidence, and we are not going to allow you to collect any evidence.

In other words, individual American citizens who challenge the might of this nation’s ruling establishment – even when founded on clearly defined constitutional grounds – will be callously swatted away like a pesky insect.

Klayman’s suit now returns back to the lower court where he is likely to meet similar resistance in obtaining the evidence he needs to prove his case.

Further reading:  Appeals court rejects challenge to NSA’s ongoing mass collection of phone data