Of all the people to be concerned about mass surveillance, I'm not sure why "an encyclopedia anyone can edit" would be the group to have standing here.
It's also important to point out what's actually being challenged. Either section 702 needs to be made a lot more complicated, or they just continue business as usual. Not surprising which path they want to take.
Standing does not _fully_ prevent this. Sometimes a person may want to plead guilty to conduct that is not a crime, or intentionally lose and serve a few years in prison if the state has agreed to not prosecute them on charges that would land them several decades.
However, it's a somewhat useful ~"you have to have some skin in the game if you're going to participate in making the rules."
Ultimately the NSA won on the state secrets doctrine. However, as it relates to standing the gist is that Wikimedia only proved that the NSA had the capacity to copy their communications, but the NSA showed they had the technical capacity to perform the operations without copying Wikimedia's communications. I.e. Even though the NSA tapped the backbones, they could filter out what they did and didn't review / copy independently from Wikimedia's communications...
Is that true, IDK. I haven't reviewed the evidence.
Quote:
Both parties have focused their discussion of Wikimedia's standing on the three prongs necessary to establish the Wikimedia Allegation,[32] which were enumerated in the Fourth Circuit's remand order in this case. See Wikimedia Found., 857 F.3d at 210-11. The three prongs are: (A) Wikimedia's communications almost certainly traverse every international Internet backbone 601*601 link connecting the United States with the rest of the world; (B) the NSA conducts Upstream surveillance at one or more points along the Internet backbone; and (C) the NSA, for technical reasons, must be copying and reviewing all the text-based communications that travel across a given Internet backbone link upon which it conducts Upstream surveillance. Together, these three prongs would establish that the NSA has copied and collected some of Wikimedia's communications in the course of the NSA's Upstream surveillance program, thereby providing Wikimedia standing to sue here.
The sufficiency of the evidence with respect to each of these prongs is discussed in detail below. The summary judgment record contains specific facts which show no genuine dispute as to the veracity of the first two prongs of the Wikimedia Allegation. With respect to the third prong, however, the summary judgment factual record contains specific facts that establish, without a genuine dispute of material fact, that the NSA, in the course of Upstream surveillance, does not need to be copying any of Wikimedia's communications as a technological necessity. Thus, the summary judgment record does not contain the facts necessary for Wikimedia to establish standing at summary judgment via the Wikimedia Allegation.
The list goes on and on, and these scenarios are no longer science fiction - once you have the data, it's easy to create such automations. Wikipedia even provides helpful classification with its category system.
> This government surveillance has had a measurable chilling effect on Wikipedia users, with research documenting a drop in traffic to Wikipedia articles on sensitive topics, following public revelations about the NSA’s mass surveillance in 2013.
My recollection from reading about this way back in 2016 was that it was about communication between WMF employees, not user data. And to have standing, they should be demonstrating harm, not just saying "the technical ability to spy on our communications exists".