Another flimsy justification for aggregative surveillance bites the dust — the Second Circuit court ruled today that Section 215 of the Patriot Actdoes notgive the National Security Agency any authority to accumulate metadata . In other Word : the NSA ’s phone snooping program is straight - up outlawed .
A panel of three judges overturned an earlier territorial dominion court opinion that the NSA ’s program did n’t involve judicial review .
“ We conclude that the territorial dominion judicature erred in ruling that Section 215 authorizes the telephone metadata accumulation program , and instead hold that the telephone metadata aggregation program exceed the scope of what Congress has authorized and therefore dishonour Section 215 , ” the rulingreads .
This is a big coke to the NSA , since it use Section 215as its independent justificationfor its controversial sound surveillance program , first made public by Edward Snowden . The opinion did n’t add up right out and say that the program was unconstitutional , but the lawcourt was forthright in its disapproval . The ruling note that the NSA ’s rendering of Section 215 could allow for for an “ unprecedented condensation of the privacy expectations of all Americans . ”
“ For years , the government secretly spied on million of innocent Americans based on a shockingly wide interpretation of its authority . The court rightly reject the governance ’s hypothesis that it may carry information on all of us in caseful that info shew utile in the future , ” ACLU Attorney Alex Abdo said in a statement . “ tidy sum surveillance does not make us any safe , and it is fundamentally incompatible with the privateness necessary in a liberal society . ” The ACLU filed the case in 2013 , following the Snowden divine revelation .
A of late declassify report on another NSA surveillance program , Stellarwind , revealed that many top officialshad serious doubt about its legality for years , and this find underlines that the justification for this sort of dragnet surveillance is essentially flawed .
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