Civil liberties group ACLU had argued bulk collection violated constitutional bar against warrantless searches
The federal government's bulk collection of Americans' telephone records after the Sept. 11 terror attacks exceeds what Congress has allowed, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union illustrated the complexity of balancing privacy interests with the nation's security.
A lower court judge had previously thrown out the case, but the appeals court said the lower court had erred in ruling that the phone records collection by the National Security Agency (NSA) was legal.
The 2nd Circuit, however, declined to block the collection of phone records under the NSA program, saying it is now up to Congress to decide whether and under what conditions it should continue.
"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," said the opinion written by Circuit Judge Gerald Lynch.
The ACLU welcomed the decision, calling it a "resounding victory for the rule of law"
“For years, the government secretly spied on millions of innocent Americans based on a shockingly broad interpretation of its authority," ACLU staff attorney Alex Abdo, who argued the case before the three-judge panel in September, said in the statement. "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.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.