Appeals Court Backs NSA’s Phone Data Surveillance Program
The National Security Agency’s controversial call record collection program may get another day in court, with privacy advocates and the American government facing off over whether it’s legal for details of phone calls to be collected in the name of preventing terrorism.
A decision issued Friday by a Washington, D.C., appeals court reverses a 2013 decision and means the security agency can continue to collect the phone records of millions of Americans—for a while. The practice will be banned after a new law goes into effect in November, because a law passed by Congress this summer bars the government from such collection. Once that law goes into action, communications companies will retain call metadata, and the NSA can get it via court order.
The three-judge panel in Friday’s ruling says the case is being sent back to the lower court “for such further proceedings as may be appropriate.” Even the earlier decision hadn’t affected NSA operations, which were protected by another court ruling that prevented immediate shutdown of the operation.
Plaintiff Larry Klayman told The Washington Post Friday that the case was becoming a game of political football, accusing the judges of “reacting to the politics of the Washington Republican establishment...who say, ‘Do what you want, NSA.’ ”
While debate has raged over whether or not such data collection violates the constitutional rights of Americans against improper search and seizure, the efficacy of the data collection program has also been under fire. An independent agency created by Congress said last year that the NSA’s program has been useless in the battle against terror: The five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board couldn’t identify a single instance of a threat being discovered through the program.
The revelations that the NSA was collecting such information under the Patriot Act came courtesy of leaks about the program from former agency contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed domestic and international surveillance of metadata. WikiLeaks revealed Thursday that American officials began reaching out to diplomatic offices around the world, including in Norway and Sweden, back in 2013 to ask that Snowden be arrested and extradited.
Snowden remains in exile in Russia.
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• Op-Ed: Thank You, Edward Snowden
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Original article from TakePart
