Reuters, New York :
A US spying programme that collects data about millions of Americans’ phone calls is illegal, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday, adding pressure on lawmakers to decide quickly whether to end or replace the programme aimed to help fight terrorism.
While stopping short of declaring the programme unconstitutional, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said Congress did not authorise the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect Americans’ phone records in bulk.
The existence of the NSA’s collection of “bulk telephony metadata” was first disclosed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Writing for a three-judge panel, Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch said Section 215 of the Patriot Act governing the collection of records to fight terrorism did not authorise what he called the NSA’s collection of a “staggering” amount of information, contrary to claims by the Bush and Obama administrations.
“Such expansive development of government repositories of formerly private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans,” Mr Lynch wrote in a 97-page decision.
A US spying programme that collects data about millions of Americans’ phone calls is illegal, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday, adding pressure on lawmakers to decide quickly whether to end or replace the programme aimed to help fight terrorism.
While stopping short of declaring the programme unconstitutional, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said Congress did not authorise the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect Americans’ phone records in bulk.
The existence of the NSA’s collection of “bulk telephony metadata” was first disclosed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Writing for a three-judge panel, Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch said Section 215 of the Patriot Act governing the collection of records to fight terrorism did not authorise what he called the NSA’s collection of a “staggering” amount of information, contrary to claims by the Bush and Obama administrations.
“Such expansive development of government repositories of formerly private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans,” Mr Lynch wrote in a 97-page decision.
