DOJ, NSA Sued by Wikimedia Foundation, Others for Internet Surveillance

A lawsuit challenging the NSA mass surveillance program’s large-scale search and seizure of Internet communications, known as “upstream” surveillance, was filed against that agency and the Department of Justice Tuesday by the Wikipedia creator, the Wikimedia Foundation, the group said in a news release. Upstream surveillance “taps the Internet’s ‘backbone’ to capture communications with ‘non-U.S. persons,’” under the authority of the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (FAA), the release said. “By tapping the backbone of the Internet, the NSA is straining the backbone of democracy,” said Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Lila Tretikov. The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Rutherford Institute are among the nine co-plaintiffs in the Wikimedia Foundation’s lawsuit, which aims to end the mass surveillance program to “protect the rights of our users around the world,” the release said. “Surveillance erodes the original promise of the Internet: an open space for collaboration and experimentation, and a place free from fear,” said Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales. “Privacy is an essential right,” Wales and Tretikov wrote in a New York Times op-ed Tuesday, explaining the suit. “It is a universal right that sustains the freedoms of expression and association,” the Wikimedia Foundation release said. DOJ is reviewing the complaint, a spokeswoman told us. The NSA had no immediate comment.