Topic: Judge Says NSA Phone Surveillance Is Legal - page 2. (Read 1680 times)

Also here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/27/judge-rules-nsa-phone-data-collection-legal

So they take it to a jurisdiction they find favorable, can't there be a precedence war where ACLU and others do the same? 

Good point Carlton, I'll look into it

....
And they played yet again the 9/11 card, oh man

"Every day, people voluntarily surrender personal and seemingly-private information to trans-national corporations, which exploit that data for profit. Few think twice about it, even though it is far more intrusive that bulk telephony metadata collection."

"The right to be free from search and seizures is fundamental, but not absolute"

 

The National Security Agency's bulk collection of data from phone companies is legal, a federal judge has ruled, dismissing a significant court challenge to the practice and setting the stage for a bigger legal battle over secret surveillance programs.

U.S. District Judge WIlliam H. Pauley III in Manhattan sided with the government in his decision Friday, calling the collection program a "vital tool" to combat terrorism and deeming it "the Government's counter-punch."

The ruling stands in conflict with a decision issued earlier this month in a separate case by a federal judge in the District of Columbia who said the program "almost certainly" violated the Constitution.

The New York case was brought in June by the American Civil Liberties Union, which claimed that the NSA was violating the group's constitutional rights by collecting metadata from the ACLU's phone calls. It was among the first big legal challenges against the NSA program after it was disclosed in June.

The group sought a court order declaring that the mass call logging violated federal law governing foreign intelligence surveillance as well as constitutional free speech and search-and-seizure protections.

Judge Pauley disagreed. "The right to be free from searches and seizures is fundamental, but not absolute," he wrote.

"Every day, people voluntarily surrender personal and seemingly-private information to trans-national corporations, which exploit that data for profit. Few think twice about it, even though it is far more intrusive that bulk telephony metadata collection."

During arguments last month, Judge Pauley appeared receptive to the idea that Americans enjoyed some level of privacy in their phone records. But in his ruling, the judge said he found no evidence that the government used any of the bulk metadata for any purpose other than investigating and disrupting terrorist attacks.

"No doubt, the bulk telephony metadata collection program vacuums up information about virtually every telephone call to, from, or within the United States. That is by design, as it allows the NSA to detect relationships so attenuated and ephemeral they would otherwise escape notice," he wrote.

"As the September 11th attacks demonstrate, the cost of missing such a thread can be horrific."

The ACLU said on Friday that it was "extremely disappointed" with the decision. "We intend to appeal and look forward to making our case in the Second Circuit."

A spokeswoman for the NSA deferred comment on the case to the Justice Department, which said it was "pleased" with the decision.