In a lawsuit it filed on Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of Maryland, Wikimedia accused NSA and DOJ of violating constitutional rights on Wikipedia. Wikimedia has pleaded that the NSA program surveillance program was 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 is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other rights organizations who are co-plaintiffs on the lawsuit. Wikimedia general counsel Geoff Brigham told CNET that the lawsuit was in the making for past one year since it became known that NSA was engaged in wholesale snooping activities. Edward Snowden in his leaks had mentioned that Wikipedia was a target of NSA surveillance and that it snooped on Wikipedia users, which Wikimedia says is not acceptable under the constitutional guarantee to it and its users. Wikimedia co-founder Jimmy Wales took to New York Times on Tuesday where he wrote an editorial emphasising Wikipedia’s position vis-a-vis NSA snooping. It remains to be seen if the US courts give the decision in favour of Wikimedia and its partners. If it does do that, United States will have to rein in both NSA and DoJ and censure their surveillance activities.
