On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court rejected the ACLU’s challenge to warrantless wiretapping. That leaves the EFF’s lawsuit as the last one still standing. The argument made by the majority of justices for dismissing the ACLU challenge was that the defendant had no standing because there was no provable harm. There are many things that are disconcerting about this argument. For starters, it is entirely unclear how someone would know that specific harm has occurred to them and is the result of warrantless surveillance. But more importantly, there is a clear and present social harm that comes from this: a continued erosion of trust between citizens and the government that is leading us further down the path towards a spy-vs-spy society. We have to hold government accountable and insist on due process and maximum transparency if we don’t want to use the Internet to bring us into a more open society rather than a crypto dystopia. If you care about this as well, now is a good time to support the EFF.

On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court rejected the ACLU’s challenge to warrantless wiretapping. That leaves the EFF’s lawsuit as the last one still standing. The argument made by the majority of justices for dismissing the ACLU challenge was that the defendant had no standing because there was no provable harm. There are many things that are disconcerting about this argument. For starters, it is entirely unclear how someone would know that specific harm has occurred to them and is the result of warrantless surveillance. But more importantly, there is a clear and present social harm that comes from this: a continued erosion of trust between citizens and the government that is leading us further down the path towards a spy-vs-spy society. We have to hold government accountable and insist on due process and maximum transparency if we don’t want to use the Internet to bring us into a more open society rather than a crypto dystopia. If you care about this as well, now is a good time to support the EFF.