Americans who pick up the phone to call overseas have no way of knowing whether they’re on the modern-day equivalent of a party line. For that, they can blame the unwarranted expansion of U.S. antiterrorism surveillance in the wake of 9/11.
More than a decade after the terror attacks, the constitutionality of spying on untold numbers of likely innocent citizens — including by monitoring their e-mail messages — has yet to be tested by the courts. Now, though, the Supreme Court could clear the way for that long-overdue legal review with a ruling granting citizens the right to challenge secret wiretapping of international calls and messages out of the plausible fear that their privacy rights are being breached.
