Judge deems US bulk surveillance legal

A federal judge has affirmed the legality of the US government's bulk collection of phone and email data from foreign nationals living outside the country - including their contact with US citizens - in denying a man's motion to dismiss his terrorism conviction.

It was the first legal challenge to the government's bulk data-collection program of non-US citizens living overseas after revelations about massive, warrantless surveillance were made public by former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden.

The program also sweeps up information about US citizens who have contact with overseas suspects. This type of surveillance played a key role in this case.

Lawyers for Mohamed Mohamud, a US citizen who lived in Oregon, tried to show the program violated his constitutional rights and was more broadly unconstitutional. US District Judge Garr King on Tuesday denied that effort.

The ruling also upheld Mohamud's conviction on terrorism charges. In his decision, King rejected the argument from Mohamud's lawyers that prosecutors failed to notify Mohamud of information derived under the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) until he was already convicted.

Suppressing the evidence collected "and a new trial would put defendant in the same position he would have been in if the government notified him of the (surveillance) at the start of the case", King wrote. "Dismissal is not warranted here."

Mohamud's lawyers argued that such a failure withheld important information from the defence team.

Mohamud was convicted last year of attempting to detonate a bomb at Portland's Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in 2010. The purported plot was actually an FBI sting, and the bomb was a fake.

The bulk data collection under FISA permits the US government to sweep up information regarding foreign nationals "reasonably believed" to be outside the US But it also includes the incidental collection of data from US citizens communicating with people in other countries.

That was the case with Mohamud, whose email communications with two terror suspects were used as evidence at his trial.

Both of those men, US citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, were killed in drone strikes in 2011. The federal government classified the men as enemy combatants.

Mohamud also communicated with a friend who was believed to have travelled to Pakistan to attend a terrorist training camp, according to evidence presented at the trial.

King said in his ruling that Mohamud's lawyers didn't have classified information provided by prosecutors to King, and therefore could only speculate as to the evidence given falsely or omitted by the government.

"This is insufficient," King said in the ruling. "I realise the difficult position the defence team is in, but the denial of a (hearing) is commonplace in the FISA context."