United States v. Basaaly Saeed Moalin
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
973 F.3d 977, 2020 WL 5225704 (2020)
- Written by Sean Carroll, JD
Facts
In June 2013, Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed that the NSA had been running a program under which it collected subscribers’ telephony metadata from telephone companies. The metadata included the phone numbers involved in a call, the time of the call, and the duration of the call, among other identifying factors. The collection was authorized by a court pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In February 2013, Basaaly Saeed Moalin (defendant) had been convicted of sending money to Somalia to support a foreign terrorist organization. The U.S. government had used metadata collected as part of the NSA program to obtain voice recordings of Moalin’s calls and a wiretap of Moalin’s phone. As a result of the Snowden revelations, Moalin discovered for the first time that the government had used the metadata collection in its investigation of him. The NSA metadata program was discontinued in 2015. Moalin moved for a new trial based on these revelations, alleging that the metadata collection violated his Fourth Amendment rights and that the government improperly failed to notify him of the surveillance. After Moalin’s motion was denied, he appealed his conviction,
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Berzon, J.)
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