The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has refused to hear a challenge to a federal surveillance program.
The program in question, known as “Upstream,” allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept telephone and Internet traffic from within and outside the United States.
The details of the program were among those leaked by former CIA and NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who in 2013 blew the whistle on mass surveillance programs orchestrated by the U.S. government. Until then, the administration of President George W. Bush and the intelligence community had falsely claimed that Americans’ data was not being collected and saved….