Judge Leon of the DC District Court has held that the NSA’s bulk data collection of telephony metadata violates the Fourth Amendment and has enjoined the entire program- stayed pending appeal. The ruling came hours ago.
Leon said, “I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval. Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.”
According to Leon, the plaintiffs have a very strong case pursuant to NSA Fourth Amendment violations. However, the ruling has been stayed pending appeal to the DC Circuit Court. This means no immediate action will be taken. The federal government will appeal this case to the Circuit Court. One may also expect the case to eventually reach the Supreme Court before a final disposition is handed down.
The government argued that special circumstances warranted the NSA’s spying. In the Court opinion Leon wrote, “No Court has ever recognized a special need sufficient to justify continuous, daily searches of virtually every American citizen without any particularized suspicion.”
This Court ruling equates to winning a battle. The war goes on.
You may read the entire filing bellow.
Source: By Michael Lotfi, BenSwann.com