Top Technologists File Brief Supporting ACLU Lawsuit Against NSA Spying
“The metadata the government collects isn’t just a list of numbers dialed and times—it’s a window into the lives of millions of Americans,” EFF Staff Attorney Mark Rumold said. “The law should provide the highest level of protection for this kind of information. The technology experts who signed the brief provide a valuable perspective for the court to consider.”
The ACLU filed its lawsuit against the Director of National Intelligence, NSA, Department of Defense, Department of Justice and FBI last year after former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden revealed a secret legal order allowing for the indiscriminate capture of call metadata from Verizon Business Services.
EFF represents 17 professors who signed onto the brief, including: Profs. Harold Abelson and Ron Rivest of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Prof. Andrew Appel, chair of Princeton University’s computer science department; Prof. Steven Bellovin of Columbia University’s computer science department; and Matthew Blaze, an associate professor in the University of Pennsylvania’s Computer and Information Science Department. Other experts signed on to the brief come from Johns Hopkins University, the University of Michigan, Rice University and Purdue.
“Metadata equals surveillance,” said security expert and EFF board member Bruce Schneier, another signer of the brief. “It’s who we talk to, what we read, and where we go. When the president says ‘don’t worry, it’s only metadata,’ what he’s really saying is that you’re all under surveillance.”
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