USCA Case #14-5004
Document #1570210
Filed: 08/28/2015
2
continue to search Plaintiffs’ phone records . . . without
reasonable suspicion or probable cause.” Third Amended
Complaint at ¶ 53, Klayman I, 957 F. Supp. 2d 1. Plaintiffs
have supported this claim with specific facts, notably: (1) The
NSA operates a bulk telephony-metadata collection program;
and (2) on April 25, 2013, the FISC issued an order requiring
Verizon Business Network Services to produce its subscribers’
call detail records to the NSA on a daily basis from April 25,
2013 to July 19, 2013. However, plaintiffs are Verizon
Wireless subscribers and not Verizon Business Network
Services subscribers. Thus, the facts marshaled by plaintiffs
do not fully establish that their own metadata was ever
collected.
In his opinion below, Judge Leon eloquently explains
how these facts are nonetheless sufficient to draw the
inference that “the NSA has collected and analyzed
[plaintiffs’] telephony metadata and will continue to operate
the program consistent with FISC opinions and orders.”
Klayman v. Obama, 957 F. Supp. 2d 1, 29 (D.D.C. 2013). In
particular, Judge Leon infers from the government’s efforts to
“create a comprehensive metadata database” that “the NSA
must have collected metadata from Verizon Wireless, the
single largest wireless carrier in the United States, as well as
AT&T and Sprint, the second[-] and third-largest carriers.”
Id. at 27.
As Judge Leon’s opinion makes plain, plaintiffs have set
forth significant evidence about the NSA’s bulk-telephony
metadata program.
As a result, this case is readily
distinguishable from cases like Tooley v. Napolitano, 586
F.3d 1006 (D.C. Cir. 2009), in which allegations of unlawful
surveillance were dismissed as “patently insubstantial.” Id.
at 1009–10 (concluding that the governmental surveillance
scheme described in plaintiff’s allegations was “not
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