By The Electronic Frontier Foundation
A federal appeals court Thursday ruled that the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records is illegal, saying Congress didn’t authorize collection of a ”staggering” amount of information on Americans. The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S.Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit overturns a judge’s ruling dismissing ACLU’s challenge to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, ACLU v. Clapper.
”This is a great and welcome decision and ought to make Congress pause to consider whether the small changes contained in the USA Freedom Act are enough,” said Cindy Cohn, executive director of Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). ”The 2nd Circuit rejected on multiple grounds the government’s radical reinterpretation of Section 215 that underpinned its secret shift to mass seizure and search of Americans’ telephone records.
“While the court did not reach the constitutional issues, it certainly noted the serious problems with blindly embracing the third-party doctrine – the claim that you lose all constitutional privacy protections whenever a third-party, like your phone company, has sensitive information about your actions.”
Said EFF legislative analyst Mark Jaycox: “Now that a court of appeal has rejected the government’s arguments supporting its secret shift to mass surveillance, we look forward to other courts – including the Ninth Circuit in EFF’s Smith v. Obama case – rejecting mass surveillance as well.
“With the deadline to reauthorize section 215 looming, we also call on Congress to both expressly adopt the interpretation of the law given by the court and to take further steps to rein in the NSA and reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”
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Elsewhere:
“A federal appeals court in New York ruled on Thursday that the once-secret National Security Agency program that is systematically collecting Americans’ phone records in bulk is illegal,” the New York Times reports.
“The decision comes as a fight in Congress is intensifying over whether to end and replace the program, or to extend it without changes.”
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“Thursday’s ruling is the first time a higher-level court in the regular judicial system has reviewed the N.S.A. phone records program.”
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“The data collection had repeatedly been approved in secret by judges serving on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, which oversees national security surveillance. Those judges, who hear arguments only from the government, were willing to accept an interpretation of Section 215 that the appeals court rejected on Thursday.
“The court, in a unanimous ruling written by Judge Gerard E. Lynch, held that Section 215 ‘cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and that it does not authorize the telephone metadata program.'”
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From the Beachwood vault:
“The author of the Patriot Act, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), called the scope of data collection revealed in one of the leaked Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders ‘incredibly troubling,’ and ‘an overbroad interpretation of the Act‘ that ‘raise[s] questions about whether our constitutional rights are secure.'”
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From the Washington Post, August 2013:
“Similar concerns have come from some Republicans, including Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, a key author of the law authorizing the bulk data surveillance who has in recent weeks become a critic.
“He said classified briefings for lawmakers were a ‘rope-a-dope operation’ designed to silence ‘those who are on the trail of something that isn’t right’ because rules restrict their ability to speak with other members and the public.”
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Patriot Act Author Joins Lawsuit Against NSA.
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Author Of The Patriot Act Says Patriot Act Was Written Specifically To Prevent NSA Data Mining.
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Remember When The Patriot Act Debate Was All About Library Records?
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“Most of the act’s provisions involve modest changes in existing law that are hardly novel in theory or in practice, and many of its most controversial provisions – such as the ability of investigators in terrorism cases to obtain library records after receiving judicial approval – have yet to be used,” then-U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald wrote in 2003.
Critics were simply misinformed, Fitzgerald maintained. Will he apologize now and admit that he was the one who was wrong?
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Collecting IP addresses, too?
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Previously:
* The Chicago Connection To The Hidden Intelligence Breakdowns Behind The Mumbai Attacks.
* Human Rights Watch Sues DEA Over Bulk Collection Of American’s Telephone Records.
* U.S. Secretly Tracked Billions Of Calls For Decades.
* Amnesty International Joins ACLU, Wikimedia In Lawsuit To Stop Mass Surveillance Program.
* Stop Spying On Wikipedia Users.
* EFF Wins Battle Over Secret Legal Opinions On Government Spying.
* The NSA’s “U.S. Corporate Partners.”
* I Fight Surveillance.
* Illegal Spying Below.
* Smith vs. Obama.
* EFF Sues NSA Over FOIA.
* Stand Against Spying.
* The NSA Revelations All In One Chart.
* U.S. Supreme Court Limits Cell Phone Searches.
* EFF To Court: There’s No Doubt The Government Destroyed NSA Spying Evidence.
* House Committee Puts NSA On Notice Over Encryption Standards.
* Which Tech Companies Help Protect You From Government Data Demands?
* Lawsuit Demands DOJ Release More Secret Surveillance Court Rulings.
* Human Rights Organizations To Foreign Ministers: Stop Spying On Us.
* What The Proposed NSA Reforms Wouldn’t Do.
* Technologists Turn On Obama.
* Dear Supreme Court: Set Limits On Cell Phone Searches.
* EFF Fights National Security Letter Demands On Behalf Of Telecom, Internet Company.
* Eighth-Grader Schools The NSA.
* You Know Who Else Collected Metadata? The Stasi.
* Today We Fight Back.
* The Day We Fight Back.
* FAQ: The NSA’s Angry Birds.
* Jon Stewart: The Old Hope-A-Dope.
* Four Blatantly False Claims Obama Has Made About NSA Surveillance.
* EFF To DOJ In Lawsuit: Stop Pretending Information Revealed About NSA Over Last Seven Months Is Still A Secret.
* Judge On NSA Case Cites 9/11 Report, But It Doesn’t Actually Support His Ruling.
* Edward Snowden’s Christmas Message.
* Jon Stewart: Obama Totally Lying About NSA Spying.
* Presidential Panel To NSA: Stop Undermining Encryption.
* The NSA Is Coming To Town.
* 60 Minutes We Can’t Get Back.
* Why Care About The NSA?
* NSA Surveillance Drives Writers To Self-Censor.
* Filed: 22 Firsthand Accounts Of How NSA Surveillance Chilled The Right To Association.
* Claim On ‘Attacks Thwarted’ By NSA Spreads Despite Lack Of Evidence.
* Obama Vs. The World.
* How A Telecom Helped The Government Spy On Me.
* UN Member States Asked To End Unchecked Surveillance.
* Government Standards Agency: Don’t Follow Our Encryption Guidelines Because NSA.
* Five More Organizations Join Lawsuit Against NSA.
* A Scandal Of Historic Proportions.
* Item: NSA Briefing.
* The Case Of The Missing NSA Blog Post.
* The NSA Is Out Of Control.
* Patriot Act Author Joins Lawsuit Against NSA.
* Obama’s Promises Disappear From Web.
* Why NSA Snooping Is A Bigger Deal In Germany.
* Item: Today’s NSA Briefing.
* NSA Briefing: It Just Got Worse (Again).
* Song of the Moment: Party at the NSA.
* It Not Only Can Happen Here, It Is Happening Here.
* What NSA Transparency Looks Like.
* America’s Lying About Spying: Worse Than You Think.
* Obama Continues To Lie His Ass Off About The NSA.
* The Surveillance Reforms Obama Supported Before He Was President.
* America’s Spying: Worse Than You Think.
* Has The U.S. Government Lied About Its Snooping? Let’s Go To The Videotape.
* Who Are We At War With? That’s Classified.
* Six Ways Congress May Reform NSA Snooping.
* NSA Says It Can’t Search Its Own E-Mails.
* Does The NSA Tap That?
* Obama Explains The Difference Between His Spying And Bush’s Spying.
* FAQ: What You Need To Know About The NSA’s Surveillance Programs.
* NSA: Responding To This FOIA Would Help “Our Adversaries”.
* Fact-Check: The NSA And 9/11.
* The NSA’s Black Hole: 5 Things We Still Don’t Know About The Agency’s Snooping.
* Defenders Of NSA Surveillance Citing Chicago Case Omit Most Of Mumbai Plotter’s Story.
* Obama’s War On Truth And Transparency.
* ProPublica’s Guide To The Best Stories On The Growing Surveillance State.
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See also:
* Jimmy Carter: America’s Shameful Human Rights Record.
* James Goodale: Only Nixon Harmed A Free Press More.
* Daniel Ellsberg: Obama Has Committed Impeachable Offenses.
* Paul Steiger: Why Reporters In The U.S. Now Need Protection.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on May 8, 2015