According to a report from Reuters, two members of the US Supreme Court had confirmed the high court would be deciding on the legality of the surveillance activities conducted by the National Security Agency. The two senior justices, namely Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, made the confirmations last Thursday during a public event in Washington's National Press Club.
Journalist Marvin Kalb had posed the question upon the justices, asking whether the high court would discuss and decide the cases that have come about fron the recent disclosures about the activities of the government agency. Amongst them were the disclosures made by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The judges did not specifically tackle the NSA surveillance issue, but did acknowledge that there are number of current lawsuits pending throughout the United States challenging the collection of telephone records done by government. The decisions by federal judges have run the whole gamut, such as the one in Washington DC which said this program was probably unlawful, while a New York judge said that the program was not unlawful. These two cases are now pending with the US Supreme Court.
Scalia, one of the conservatives in the court, said, :The institution that will decide that is the institution least qualified to decide it." He added that the legal question before the court hinges on 'balancing the emergency against the intrusion' upon the individual. He also confirmed that the high court's decision would be on whether the gathering of the telecommunications data is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment protects individuals from unlawful searches and seizures conducted by government.
Ginsburg, on the other hand is one of the more liberal members of the nine person US Supreme Court. She said, "We can't run away (from the NSA surveillance issue) and say, 'Well, we don't know much about that subject so we won't decide it."
