You&#x27;re not actually arguing against the standing rule. If the government is violating your constitutional rights then you have standing.<p>The problem is you may not be able to prove it.<p>The government could have trivially helped everyone out simply by admitting that they&#x27;re spying on all these people, and then the issue could have been decided before it was important to a real criminal case, under circumstances where nobody bad is let out of prison if the government loses.<p>But then the person whose rights are violated in the deciding case ends up being a highly sympathetic journalist or civil rights leader instead of some highly unsympathetic terrorist wannabe. The government doesn&#x27;t want that (because they don&#x27;t want to lose), so instead they purposely try to force the situation in which bad people go free if the courts rule against the government.