Too Big To Comply With Court Order?
If Facebook, or Google, or AT&T or the FBI defied a court order to preserve evidence based on (paraphrased some) “told a federal court that its operations are too massive and technically complex to comply with an order to preserve evidence” would you feel some outrage?
Okay time to fess up. that was the NSA last Friday.
In a remarkable legal filing on Friday afternoon, the NSA told a federal court that its spying operations are too massive and technically complex to comply with an order to preserve evidence. The NSA, in other words, now says that it cannot comply with the rules that apply to any other party before a court — the very rules that ensure legal accountability — because it is too big.