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Denver — A terror suspect is challenging the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance programme, saying in a court document that spying by the federal government has gone too far.In the motion filed in federal court in Denver on Wednesday with help from the American Civil Liberties Union, Jamshid Muhtorov also requested that prosecutors disclose more about how surveillance law was used in his case. Muhtorov denies the terror charges he faces.
Surveillance under current law “is exceptionally intrusive and it is conducted by executive officers who enjoy broad authority to decide whom to monitor, when and for how long,” Muhtorov argued in his motion.
“The statute that authorised the surveillance is unconstitutional,” Muhtorov said, citing constitutional provisions against unreasonable search and seizure.
The ACLU called the filing the first of its kind. Justice Department spokesperson Brian Fallon declined to comment. The challenge had been expected after the Justice Department in October said it intended to use information gleaned from one of the NSA’s warrantless surveillance programmes against Muhtorov.
It was the first time the department had made such a disclosure. The US Supreme Court has so far turned aside challenges to the law on the grounds that people who bring such lawsuits have no evidence they are being targeted.
In another case involving the government’s surveillance methods, a federal judge in a Chicago terrorism case ruled on Wednesday that a defendant’s lawyers will be given access to an application prosecutors submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established to monitor spying within in the United States.
The Chicago judge called her pre-trial ruling in the case of Adel Daoud a first. Daoud has denied seeking to detonate a bomb in Chicago in 2012. — AFP
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