Wikipedia parent sues to stop NSA's massive surveillance effort

The Wikimedia Foundation argues that the NSA's full-scale seizure of Internet communications is a violation of its First and Fourth Amendment rights.

The NSA is in hot water yet again. Declan McCullagh/CNET

The Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that operates the wildly popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, says user privacy has been violated and that it's going to court to try to fix it.

Wikimedia filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of Maryland against the National Security Agency and the US Department of Justice for allegedly violating its constitutional rights on Wikipedia. The organization argues that an NSA program collecting information wholesale across the Internet, known as upstream surveillance, is a violation of its First Amendment right of free speech and a violation of the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable search and seizure.

Wikimedia said it is joined by eight other organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and represented by The American Civil Liberties Union. Wikimedia has been working on the lawsuit for "approximately one year," said its general counsel, Geoff Brigham.

"Privacy is the bedrock of individual freedom. It is a universal right that sustains the freedoms of expression and association," Wikimedia wrote Tuesday on its blog. "These principles enable inquiry, dialogue, and creation and are central to Wikimedia's vision of empowering everyone to share in the sum of all human knowledge. ... If people look over their shoulders before searching, pause before contributing to controversial articles, or refrain from sharing verifiable but unpopular information, Wikimedia and the world are poorer for it."

Wikipedia is the world's most comprehensive online encyclopedia. The service comprises editable wikis that allow users to correct misinformation and add details on individuals, events, organizations and ideas. More than 500 million people worldwide visit Wikipedia each month, and at least 75,000 people around the globe add or edit the content.

In 2013, one-time NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked information revealing Wikipedia was a target of government surveillance. According to Snowden, the US government taps the Internet's "backbone" (the core data routes between large, interconnected network centers) to capture communication with "non-U.S. persons." Part of that surveillance is authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that Congress amended in 2008, which supports US spy agencies to collect Internet information at will. (A large component in the NSA's mission stems from a 1981 executive order that legalized surveillance of foreigners living outside the US.)

Since Snowden's leaks began, the US government has shied away from claims that it may be intercepting communications and information from Americans. FISA does not authorize spying on US citizens. The ACLU and Wikimedia believe surveillance agencies are violating that regulation.

"In the course of its surveillance, the NSA copies and combs through vast amounts of Internet traffic, which it intercepts inside the United States with the help of major telecommunications companies," the ACLU said in a statement on Tuesday. "It searches that traffic for keywords called 'selectors' that are associated with its targets. The surveillance involves the NSA's warrantless review of the emails and Internet activities of millions of ordinary Americans."