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Federal Court Rules NSA Bulk Data Collection Illegal

posted by CoolHand on Thursday May 07 2015, @05:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the yay-for-the-courts dept.

AnonTechie writes:

Wired is reporting:

THE UNITED STATES Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled on Thursday that the bulk collection of phone metadata by the NSA was illegal under federal law.

Rather than address the constitutionality of the program, the court took a much simpler tack. The decision concludes that the practice is beyond the scope of what the US Congress had in mind when it passed section 215 of the Patriot Act after September 11, 2001.

The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and had been dismissed in 2013 by a lower court. Today's ruling vacates that decision, and could pave the way for a full legal challenge of NSA collection methods, which were first brought to light by Edward Snowden.

Also at: The Intercept, EFF, El Reg, BBC, NYT.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Friday May 08 2015, @02:27PM

    by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Friday May 08 2015, @02:27PM (#180319)

    > There seems to be no limit on how small that crime can be, or how long "promptly" means.

    Well, this is the same government who say "collected" means "passed through human hands".

    https://fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/d5240_1_r.pdf [fas.org]

    'Collection. Information shall be considered as "collected" only when it has been received for use by an employee of a DoD intelligence component in the course of his official duties. Thus, information volunteered to a DoD intelligence component by a cooperating source would be "collected" under this procedure when an employee of such component officially accepts, in some manner, such information for use within that component. Data acquired by electronic means is "collected" only when it has been processed into intelligible form.'

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