Alison Frankel writes:
The more we find out about the mostly secret inner workings of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the more questions we should all have about the intersection of national security and Fourth Amendment restrictions on unreasonable searches by government authorities. Based on recent comments by U.S. Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, the court is primed for an inevitable constitutional review of the National Security Agency’s program of gathering phone and Internet data from foreign suspects and U.S. citizens alike under provisions of the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That debate will surely center on the Fourth Amendment, but a lesser-known argument that has popped up in some cases challenging FISA wiretaps raises different constitutional objections to the NSA’s widespread data collection. And just as it was in California’s ban on gay marriage, Article III of the Constitution could be the linchpin of any Supreme Court decision on the legality of the NSA program.
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