Case Title Redacted
United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
2011 WL 10945618 (2011)
Under statutory authority permitting the NSA (plaintiff, as part of the federal government) to target non-citizens abroad suspected of terrorism, the government disclosed in a 2011 letter that its upstream collection method swept in more than to/from and about communications tied to targets, also capturing discrete internet communications and multi-communication transactions (MCTs) with no connection to any foreign target, including purely domestic communications between American citizens posing no national-security threat. The court had previously approved the program based on a narrower understanding of what it collected, and now had to decide whether to approve the government's updated certifications and procedures in light of this fuller disclosure.
Whether the federal government's upstream collection of internet communications violates the Fourth Amendment when it captures communications involving American citizens who are neither the surveillance target nor connected to any national-security threat.