Fears of gun registry prompt NRA to back lawsuit against US surveillance
In a brief backing the American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit against senior US government officials, the NRA said the collection of vast communications threatens privacy and could allow the government to create a registry of gun owners.
Civil rights groups filed the lawsuit earlier this year after documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed a massive government program to collect and store phone and Internet records from major telecommunications companies.
The surveillance potentially provides “the government not only with the means of identifying members and others who communicate with the NRA,” the brief said, “but also with the means of identifying gun owners without their knowledge or consent.”
President Barack Obama has defended the sweeping government surveillance but has also said he welcomed public debate on the balance between privacy and security
The NSA referred questions to the US Justice Department, which declined to comment.
US National Intelligence Director James Clapper declassified some details of the programme, acknowledging it existed, after news stories from Snowden’s leaks appeared in the Guardian of Britain and the
The ACLU said it welcomed the support from the NRA in its suit against Clapper and other officials filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
“Americans from across the political spectrum value individual privacy,” said Jameel Jaffer, one of the ACLU lawyers on the suit. “The philosophical roots may differ, but I think that is a widely shared American value.”
