NACDL News: Fourth Circuit Permits Mass Surveillance Lawsuit to Move Forward, but Without the Crimin

In March 2015, Wikimedia, NACDL, Human Rights Watch, and several other organizations filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland challenging the National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass interception and searching of Americans’ international internet communications. The case is captioned Wikimedia, et al. v. NSA. On Oct. 23, 2015, the district court granted a motion by the government to dismiss the case, holding that the group of plaintiffs had not made plausible allegations that their communications were, in fact, being monitored by the NSA. On May 23, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal, but only as to one plaintiff in the case, Wikimedia itself.