Antinuclear

Lawsuit Against Alleged CIA Spying on Assange Visitors: A Rare Court Hearing

A federal judge pushed back when a government attorney refused to confirm or deny whether the CIA had engaged in warrantless surveillance.

SCHEERPOST, By Kevin Gosztola / The Dissenter, November 21, 2023

A United States court held an extraordinary hearing on November 16, where a judge carefully considered a lawsuit against the CIA and former CIA director Mike Pompeo for their alleged role in spying on American attorneys and journalists who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Judge John Koeltl of the Southern District of New York pushed back when Assistant U.S. Attorney Jean-David Barnea refused to confirm or deny that the CIA had targeted Americans without obtaining a warrant. He also invited attorneys for the Americans to update the lawsuit so that claims of privacy violations explicitly dealt with the government’s lack of a warrant.

In August 2022, four Americans sued the CIA and Pompeo: Margaret Ratner Kunstler, a civil rights activist and human rights attorney; Deborah Hrbek, a media lawyer who represented Assange or WikiLeaks; journalist John Goetz, who worked for Der Spiegel when the German media organization first partnered with WikiLeaks; and journalist Charles Glass, who wrote articles on Assange for The Intercept.

The lawsuit alleged that as visitors Glass, Goetz, Hrbek, and Kunstler were required to “surrender” their electronic devices to employees of a Spanish company called UC Global, which was contracted to provide security for the Ecuador embassy.

UC Global and the company’s director David Morales “copied the information stored on the devices” and shared the information with the CIA. The agency even had access to live video and audio feeds from cameras in the embassy………………………………………………………………………………………………

Though the court was open to reviewing arguments against the CIA, Koeltl seemed highly skeptical that the claim against Pompeo in his individual capacity would survive against the government.

In 1971, a U.S. Supreme Court case known as Bivens created a process for bringing cases against federal government officials for violating a person’s constitutional rights. Pompeo was sued under that doctrine. However, courts have been extremely reluctant to allow plaintiffs to pursue damages when a case may set a precedent or lead to a court intruding upon national security and foreign policy matters…………………………………………………………….

The CIA knew from their passports whether they were American citizens or not, and the agency still went ahead with targeted surveillance against them.  https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/21/lawsuit-against-alleged-cia-spying-on-assange-visitors-a-rare-court-hearing/

November 23, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized