The National Security Agency’s phone surveillance program, in which the agency gathered phone records of American citizens, has been ruled illegal by a federal appeals court. The program was exposed in 2013 in the thousands of documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the phone metadata collection program “exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized” in the Patriot Act, reports CNN. The case was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2013
The three-judge panel did not agree with the government, which claimed that the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act did give it the authority to collect phone records. However, the court stopped short of calling the program completely unconstitutional and instead sent to back to a lower court.
In addition, the court declined to put an immediate stop to the program, since the portion of the Patriot Act that the government thought authorized it to have it in place expired in June.
“In light of the asserted national security interests at stake, we deem it prudent to pause to allow an opportunity for debate in Congress that may (or may not) profoundly alter the legal landscape,” the court’s opinion reads.
“This decision is a resounding victory for the rule of law,” ACLU Staff Attorney Alex Abdo said in a statement. “For years, the government secretly spied on millions of innocent Americans based on a shockingly broad interpretation of its authority. The court rightly rejected the government’s theory that it may stockpile information on all of us in case that information proves useful in the future. Mass surveillance does not make us any safer, and it is fundamentally incompatible with the privacy necessary in a free society.”
You can read the 97-page ruling right here.
image of President Obama courtesy of Kristin Callahan/ACE/INFphoto.com