Libertarian Candidate for Congress Sues NSA for Privacy Violations

On February 5th, Jaime O. Perez, Libertarian Candidate for Texas Congressional District 16, filed a federal lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) for clear and outstanding violations of the US Constitution.

Joined by Carl Starr, a constitutional advocate and legal analyst, Perez is challenging the “expansive collection of [his] telephone records and the legality of a secret and illegal scheme to intercept…vast quantities of information.”

“The metadata collection effort violates constitutional protections with the most serious consequence the ex post facto (after the fact) evaluation of specific interactions, associations and implied violations without a warrant,” said Carl Starr.

The suit alleges violation of the 5th amendment guaranteeing due process, of the first amendment right of freedom of speech, and of the fourth amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

“The constitutional violations are particularly egregious since it is still not known to what extent specific calls are recorded and what constitute crimes that rise to the level of prosecution. In other words, some may give false testimony regarding some phone call in order to entrap the communicator on an entirely different set of law violations. This prosecution by convenience gives rise to the specter of a database of enemies of the state,” said Jaime O. Perez.

For example, it is known some within the NSA were monitoring the phone calls of their boyfriends and spouses and some were monitoring persons of interest unrelated to terrorism activities.

The issue of secret surveillance was brought to the fore by Edward Snowden in a series of revelations regarding a secret data collection program known only to key administration officials and a secret judiciary.

The lawsuit arises as a consequence of two district court decisions recently handed down: one on the east coast that ruled against the NSA, which describes the program as ‘Orwellian’ and another on the west coast that is under appeal.

Plaintiffs hope to obtain judgment against the government by more specifically delineating the constitutional issues at stake.

The case landed in the court of Kathleen Cardone, a respected constitutional jurist. “This is great news,” said Jaime O. Perez. “Judge Cardone is known for her sober judicial temperament and her fierce defense of constitutional protections,” Perez added.

(LPTexas Note: Jamie O. Perez is running as a Libertarian U.S. House of Representatives Candidate for District 16. Please visit his website http://voteforjaime.com/ to learn more!)

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