Could NSA surveillance help an accused bank robbery conspirator? His lawyer thinks so
The lawyer for a Florida man accused in a series of bank robbery attempts says phone records collected by the National Security Agency could prove his client wasn’t at one of the crime sites.
The lawyer, Marshall Dore Louis, has filed a motion for NSA records on phones used by his client, Terrance Brown, report the South Florida Sun Sentinel and the Southern District of Florida Blog, which broke the story. Louis sought the records after a former CIA employee told the Guardian last weekend of a massive data collection program by the NSA.
U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenbaum has asked prosecutors to respond in a June 10 order.
Brown is one of five men accused in an alleged conspiracy to steal cash from armored trucks making cash deliveries. The government is using cellphone records in an effort to prove the men were all close by during planning and attempted robberies. Brown’s cellphone carrier has not kept records before September 2010; his lawyer says the records would prove Brown was not present for a July 2010 robbery.
The author of the Southern District of Florida Blog is defense lawyer David Oscar Markus. He asserts that the government should turn over the information if it is indeed “spying on our phone calls.”
“What’s good for the goose, is good for the gander,” he told the Sun Sentinel.
