U.S. Court: NSA Didn’t Violate Constitution

U.S. Court: NSA Didn’t Violate Constitution

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The U.S. National Security Agency’s bulk collection and storage of phone metadata does not violate the U.S. Constitution, according to a federal judge’s decision.

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The NSA is watching over us

The decision comes less than two weeks after another federal judge, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, in Washington, D.C., called the same metadata collection program “almost Orwellian” and ruled that it likely violates the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. Pauley addressed this argument in Friday’s decision. “The right to be free from search and seizures is fundamental, but not absolute,” he wrote. “Whether the Fourth Amendment protects bulk telephony metadata is ultimately a questions of reasonableness.”

The ACLU filed its first document in the case, a formal complaint, on June 11, just days after the first media reports of the NSA’s vast data-gathering capabilities surfaced. We’ve since learned a great deal more about those capabilities, thanks in large part to secret documents former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked to journalists.

IHLS – Israel Homeland Security

Pauley does not dispute the NSA’s “Orwellian” strategies in his decision, he rather affirms the rationale for the programs, which NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have frequently defended in the past several months. “No doubt, the bulk telephony metadata collection program vacuums up information about virtually every telephone call to, from, or within the United States,” Pauley wrote. “That is by design, as it allows the NSA to detect relationships so attenuated and ephemeral they would otherwise escape notice.”

Recently an independent council commissioned by President Barack Obama to investigate the NSA’s practices released a 300-page report detailing 46 recommended changes to the agency’s practices to help restore the public’s confidence in the agency and its surveillance programs. The panel’s most notable recommendation was that the NSA should end its telephone metadata program. Instead, it suggested private phone companies or other private third parties should collect and hold the records. The NSA could then access the data through a court order when necessary and appropriate.

Pauley, in his decision, reasoned that the government has less inclination than third parties to misuse citizens’ personal data. “Every day, people voluntarily surrender personal and seemingly-private information to transnational corporations, which exploit that data for profit,” Pauley wrote. “Few think twice about it, even though it is far more intrusive than bulk telephony metadata collection.”

Source: Mashable