WASHINGTON, Dec 17: The US government’s collection of massive amounts of data about telephone calls, a program revealed in June after leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, is likely unlawful, a judge ruled .
US District Judge Richard Leon stayed his own ruling pending an expected appeal by the government, but in a significant challenge to US spying authority, he wrote that the program likely violated Americans’ right to be free of unreasonable searches.
‘I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen,’ Leon wrote, citing earlier court precedent.
The U.S. Justice Department was reviewing the ruling, a spokesman said.
The British newspaper The Guardian reported in June that a US surveillance court had secretly approved the collection of millions of raw daily phone records, such as the length of calls and the numbers that are dialed. The data collected do not include actual conversations, US officials said.
Civil liberties advocates have called the database an intrusion on privacy and they sued to end it, while the government has said the ability to search data going back seven years is crucial to fighting militant groups such as al Qaeda.
Leon expressed skepticism of the program’s value, writing that the government could not cite a single instance in which the bulk data actually stopped an imminent attack.
(AGENCIES)
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