Theres No Doubt The Government Destroyed NSA Spying EvidenceElectronic Frontier Foundation Urges Judge to Rule Destroyed Evidence Would Show Clients Were Surveilled The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) told a federal court today that there was no doubt that the government has destroyed years of evidence of NSA spying the government itself has admitted to it in recent court filings. In a brief filed today in response to this illegal destruction, EFF is asking that the court make an adverse inference that the destroyed evidence would show that plaintiffs communications and records were in fact swept up in the mass NSA spying programs. EFF filed its first lawsuit challenging illegal government spying in 2006. The current dispute arises from Jewel v. NSA, EFFs 2008 case that challenges the governments mass seizure of three kinds of information: Internet and telephone content, telephone records, and Internet records, all going back to 2001. EFFs brief notes that the governments own declarations make clear that the government has destroyed five years of the content it collected between 2007 and 2012, three years worth of the telephone records it seized between 2006 and 2009, and seven years of the Internet records it seized between 2004 and 2011, when it claims to have ended the Internet records seizures. The court has issued a number of preservation orders over the years, but the government decided without consent from the judge or even informing EFF that those orders simply dont apply, said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. Regular civil litigants would face severe sanctions if they so obviously destroyed relevant evidence. But we are asking for a modest remedy: a ruling that we can assume the destroyed records would show that our plaintiffs were in fact surveilled by the government. EFF and our clients have always had the same simple claim: the governments mass, warrantless surveillance violates the rights of all Americans and must be stopped. The surveillance was warrantless under the executives authority and it is still warrantless under the FISA court, as those orders are plainly not warrants. said Cohn. The governments attempt to limit our claims based upon their secret, shifting rationales is nothing short of outrageous, and their clandestine decision to destroy evidence under this flimsy argument is rightly sanctionable. Nevertheless, we are simply asking the court to ensure that we are not harmed by the governments now-admitted destruction of this evidence. For the full brief on the governments non-compliance: For more on Jewel v. NSA: Contacts: Cindy Cohn Andrew Crocker Related Cases 