Court Rules NSA Phone Program Not Authorized By Patriot Act
A federal appeals court has ruled that collection of phone data by the National Security Agency is not authorized under the Patriot Act.
The NSA has used the Patriot Act to justify collecting records of nearly every call made in the U.S. and entering them into a database to search for possible contacts among terrorism suspects.
The scope of the program was revealed when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents describing the program, triggering a national debate over the extent of the data collection…
The court’s ruling was in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union arguing the data collection should be stopped because it violates Americans’ privacy rights. A lower court judgeruled the program was constitutional, and the civil liberties group appealed, leading to Thursday’s decision.
”The text of (Section 215) cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and…does not authorize the telephone metadata program,’’ the court wrote.
Copyright 2015 Liberaland
8 responses to Court Rules NSA Phone Program Not Authorized By Patriot Act
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illinoisboy1977 May 7th, 2015 at 11:25
This is an important ruling. If the cell phone companies wish to stop providing the metadata, they can now do so. They have a court ruling to protect themselves from any legal repercussions. However, if your cell phone company still chooses to hand that data over, the records are property of the phone company and they can release that information, at their pleasure.
burqa May 8th, 2015 at 01:36
They don’t need a court ruling.
Check your user agreement with your provider.
To get service, the phone companies require you to agree ahead of time for them to do whatever the hell they want with your metadata.
Those phone companies are corporations and what does a corporation do?
It generates profits for shareholders, that’s what. They did so by selling the metadata to the government.
sofarsogood May 7th, 2015 at 17:24
Those who risk life and limb to uncover government wrongdoing are heroes. And Snowden certainly deserves that title.
burqa May 8th, 2015 at 01:32
You might have an argument if that was the extent of Snowden’s thievery.
Less than 10% of what Snowden stole and took to our adversaries had anything to do with this program. Those who praise Snowden tend to ignore the content of the overwhelming majority of his loot.
Snowden took a goldmine of intelligence and gave it to those who do not mean us well – including terrorists trying to mass murder Americans whom Snowden helped avoid American surveillance and other intelligence collection.
Snowden is not just a thief, he sold out his country and stabbed us all in the backs the same way the Rosenbergs, Klaus Fuchs and Ted Hall sold us out when they gave the commies our atomic secrets.
For those of us who are interested in such issues, James Bamford legally informed us of this kind of intelligence efforts in several books, beginning, as I recall, with the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Puzzle Palace, published in the 80s. More recently, before Snowden, Bamford published Body of Secrets and The Shadow Factory that include an extraordinary amount of information on the NSA.
Warman1138 May 7th, 2015 at 19:58
About time.
AAASuperPatriot May 8th, 2015 at 00:29
The biggest scandal is that this multi-billion dollar program has not caught any terrorists.
fahvel May 8th, 2015 at 03:00
sure it has but only when they order pizza.
robert May 8th, 2015 at 12:27
its time to get cheney on the boob tube to explain why