Civil rights attorneys say surveillance evidence used to convict a Somali-American man who plotted to bomb a 2010 Christmas tree-lighting ceremony was gathered unconstitutionally through the U.S. government’s warrantless foreign surveillance program.
(FOX)- They laid out their arguments Wednesday before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in downtown Portland — directly across the street from the plaza where almost six years prior Mohamed Mohamud tried detonating a fake bomb that was part of an undercover operation.
Mohamud is appealing his 2013 conviction on grounds that he was entrapped by undercover federal agents posing as al-Qaida members and the warrantless surveillance of his foreign communications violated his constitutional rights.
It marks the first time a federal appeals court is considering whether the National Security Agency’s foreign surveillance programs — the same ones that came under scrutiny after the Edward Snowden leaks a few years ago — violate the Fourth Amendment rights of criminal defendants.
Stephen Sady, Mohamud’s public defender, and another attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union urged the court for a new trial on grounds that the evidence used against Mohamud should’ve never been allowed in the courtroom.
Sady told the judges that using surveillance information on foreigners, which doesn’t require a warrant, to spy on any Americans they communicate with is “an incredible diminution of the privacy rights of all Americans … That is a step that should never be taken.”
U.S. prosecutors defended the program, saying it’s perfectly legal under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to access information on Americans that was obtained through foreign communications.