Appeal In EFF's Big Lawsuit Against NSA Dismissed For 'Lack Of Jurisdiction'; Heads Back To Lower Court Again

from the is-there-no-way-to-challenge-these? dept

Fri, Dec 18th 2015 1:40pm — Mike Masnick

One of the big EFF lawsuits against NSA surveillance, Jewel v. NSA, which has been going for many years (since before the Snowden revelations) has just been dismissed by the 9th Circuit appeals court, for "lack of jurisdiction." The issue is really more of a procedural one, than on the substance, but it's still unfortunate. Without going into the details (you can read the full 17 page ruling if you want that), there was an effort to "expedite" (as much as you can use that word for a case that has been going on for almost a decade) a single part of the ruling, and the appeals court basically says you can't do that, and things need to wait until there's a full decision from the lower court.

We are sympathetic to the Jewel plaintiffs’ desire to bring at least part of this case to a close. But awaiting a decision on a single claim, which is not a linchpin claim either factually or legally, does not advance this result. In fact, the result of this appeal has been to bring the district court proceedings to a halt. Both sides point fingers as to why no final decision has been reached. We do not take sides in that debate, except to say that the parties’ and judicial resources would be better spent obtaining a final judgment on all of the claims, instead of detouring to the court of appeals for a piecemeal resolution of but one sliver of the case.

And so, we wait some more....

15-16133 (PDF)15-16133 (Text)

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: 4th amendment, 9th circuit, jewel v nsa, nsa, surveillance
Companies: eff

7 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Michael, 18 Dec 2015 @ 2:11pm

Typical US judicial ruling: "The buck stops...over there."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 18 Dec 2015 @ 2:25pm

Lack of Jurisdiction
One wonders if one of any of the circuit court justices (from any of the courts) got surveilled (well we know they have been) by the one of these 'legal' surveillance programs and were accused of something (becoming radicalized for instance which is easy to accuse anybody of because there is no definition), would they have jurisdiction to sue?

Maybe if one of them shows up on the no-fly list and is not allowed to use any legal process to get off?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 18 Dec 2015 @ 5:56pm

This will still be waiting on the governments approval after everyone involved has died of unnatural causes. As it's this sort of thing that makes people turn to violent solutions when the lawful and peaceful solutions are suppressed by those in charge.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Whatever (profile), 18 Dec 2015 @ 6:43pm

The decision is clear. The court is not impressed by EFF creating a diversion which forced the main case to stop while the court considered their (mostly self-serving) arguments. All this has done is create more delays in a main case that has been going on for a very long time.

It would appear that perhaps EFF feels that the main case is going poorly, and their only hope is delay, delay, delay....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 19 Dec 2015 @ 9:38am
  
  Re:
  I'm in the unusual place of agreeing with your initial statement.
  
  However, givent hat the NSA have a long and storied history of lying under Oath...I'm not sure that the EFF is delaying here, because the issue is that the NSA says that no-one has standing to sue them over their infohoovering.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- GEMont (profile), 20 Dec 2015 @ 10:28am
  
  Re:
  "It would appear that perhaps EFF feels that the main case is going poorly, and their only hope is delay, delay, delay...."
  
  Why on earth would EFF have to "delay, delay, delay" in a case where the government has done nothing but cause delay for almost a decade??
  
  As for the case "going poorly", the government has pretty much insured the case goes nowhere at all, for years.
  
  Are you sure you're arguing about the same article??
  
  ---
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 19 Dec 2015 @ 6:53am

NSA to Judge ...you don't have to break your oath , just slow everything down until they run out of money and toss a few more deterrents in there and those pictures of you will disappear forever , or until we need them again.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]