Appeals court restores previously-dismissed surveillance lawsuit

Enlarge / A helicopter view of the National Security Agency. (credit: Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images News)

A lawyer who specializes in family and bankruptcy law gets another chance in his ambitious lawsuit filed against President Barack Obama. On Wednesday, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals restored his case, after it had been dismissed at a lower district court.

Specifically, Elliott Schuchardt argued in his June 2014 complaint that both the metadata and the content of his Gmail, Facebook, and Dropbox accounts were compromised under the PRISM program as revealed in the documents leaked by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.

In an amended complaint filed in September 2014, Schuchardt expanded his argument, and he specifically challenged the legality of surveillance programs authorized by Executive Order 12333, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (FISA AA) and Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. (Ars explored the history of Executive Order 12333 in August 2014.)