R.I.P. Scout26
Washington (CNN) -- A federal judge said Monday that he believes the government's once-secret collection of domestic phone records is unconstitutional, setting up likely appeals and further challenges to the data mining revealed by classified leaker Edward Snowden.U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said the National Security Agency's bulk collection of metadata -- phone records of the time and numbers called without any disclosure of content -- apparently violates privacy rights.His preliminary ruling favored five plaintiffs challenging the practice, but Leon limited the decision only to their cases."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," said Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush. "Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment."
"Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights. It is the first of many," according to Snowden, who is living in Russia under a grant of asylum to avoid prosecution over the leaks in the United States.
In defending the program, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that "15 separate judges of the FISA Court have held on 35 occasions that Section 215 (of the Patriot Act) authorizes the collection of telephony metadata in bulk in support of counterterrorism investigations."
Doesn't matter a whit. The SCOTUS could rule it violates the 4th and is thus illegal, and the NSA would just continue on its merry way. They will have to be defunded and dismantled to make them stop.
The judge made his ruling; now let him enforce it
Yeah, I was thinking about Jackson too when I wrote that.
The courts/congress need to stop blocking the efforts of Dear Leader.
Bull. Congress wrote Patriot Act. This isn't any kind of "Dear Leader" bullscat, whether one wants to dig on Bush or Obama.This is authoritarian intimidation of the population by the empowered, and Congress is 100% complicit in it.
Unconstitutional?Cool, so who's going to jail?
