Judge dismisses Wikimedia case against NSA over Upstream surveillance
From the article: &quot;Judge Ellis said: &quot;For Wikimedia to litigate the standing issue further, and for defendants to defend adequately in any further litigation, would require the disclosure of protected state secrets, namely details about the Upstream surveillance program&#x27;s operations. For the reasons that follow, therefore, the standing issue cannot be tried, or otherwise further litigated, without risking or requiring harmful disclosures of privileged state secrets, an outcome prohibited under binding Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit precedent.&quot;<p>This is why whistleblowers are so important. The &quot;state secrets&quot; firewall means that the public has no ability to police government surveillance.<p>It&#x27;s a frustrating situation because intelligence agencies obviously do need to keep secrets while at the same time they can use this as justification to keep anything they want secret, even when there is no real national security concern with revealing the information.