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US Court rules against NSA secret phone-snooping

Posted December. 18, 2013 03:23,   

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A federal judge ruled Monday (local time) that the National Security Agency’s surveillance program that collects millions of Americans’ telephone records is unconstitutional and the agency must stop the program and delete the records.

It was the first ruling that the US Court recognized the illegality of the agency’s massive data collection, revealed by former CIA agent Edward Snowden, and is deemed as a milestone ruling that valued individuals’ privacy over the arbitrary invasion. The ruling is expected to deal a blow to the agency’s information collection.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon sided with Larry Klayman, founder of Freedom Watch, and Charles Strange who claimed that the NSA’s indiscriminate data collection must be suspended due to the infringement of people’s privacy in a lawsuit against President Barack Obama and the Obama administration. However, Leon issued a preliminary injunction against the program but suspended the order for the government to appeal in consideration of the impact of the case on national security and the nature of the ruling related to the constitution.

The Justice Department said it would appeal, saying, “We received secret court approval (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) to collect vast amounts of metadata.”

“Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment,” said Leon. “I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval.”