Snowden scores a big victory
Courtesy of Edward Snowden via WiredSnowden with Former CIA and NSA chief General Michael Hayden at a gala in 2011A US appeals court just ruled that the NSA's dragnet on millions of Americans' phone calls is illegal, and Edward Snowden served as the catalyst to the decision.
"Americans first learned about the telephone metadata program that appellants now challenge on June 5, 2013, when the British newspaper The Guardian published a FISC order leaked by former government contractor Edward Snowden," the court notes.
The order directed Verizon to produce to the NSA "on an ongoing daily basis . . . all call detail records or 'telephony metadata' created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls."
The US government justified the program by saying that it was covered under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001 in the wake of a terrorist attack on September 11.
Section 215, known as the business records provision, authorized intelligence agencies to apply for information if "the records are relevant to an ongoing foreign intelligence investigation."
The appeals court ruled, however, that"the bulk telephone metadata program is not authorized by § 215."
Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the author of the original USA PATRIOT Act, had filed an amicus brief in the suit in which he argued that the government had gone far beyond what the legislation authorizes.
"The NSA is gathering on a daily basis the details of every call that every American makes, as well as every call made by foreigners to or from the United States," the brief read. "How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation?"