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A third case challenging government phone surveillance will...

A third case challenging government phone surveillance will go to federal appellate court. Anna Smith, the plaintiff in Smith v. Obama, filed an opening brief with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, said the Electronic Frontier…

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Foundation in a blog post Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1u1l1K7). EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union are backing Smith. The other cases before federal appellate court are Klayman v. Obama and ACLU v. Clapper, which held oral argument before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday (CD Sept 3 p1). EFF said the government’s opposition to Smith should be filed by Oct. 2 and there will likely be a hearing in November. Smith contends that government phone surveillance runs contrary to the Fourth Amendment and questions the relevance of the 1979 Supreme Court case Smith v. Maryland. The government has frequently cited the 1979 Smith case, involving the question of what violates the Fourth Amendment, in justifying the legality of its surveillance tools. “The continuation of the surveillance at issue means the continuation of the government’s intrusion into Mrs. Smith’s sensitive associations and communications,” said the Smith opening brief (http://bit.ly/1unefxm). “When the government takes this private information for its own purposes, the injury is immediate -- it is complete as soon as the government interjects itself into the zone of privacy."