{"id":7934,"date":"2015-05-08T06:15:58","date_gmt":"2015-05-08T11:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7934"},"modified":"2015-05-08T06:15:59","modified_gmt":"2015-05-08T11:15:59","slug":"nsas-bulk-collection-of-phone-records-is-illegal-appeals-court-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7934","title":{"rendered":"NSA&#8217;s Bulk Collection of Phone Records is Illegal, Appeals Court Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/05\/07\/appellate-court-rules-nsas-bulk-collection-phone-records-illegal\/\" target=\"_blank\">NSA\u2019S BULK COLLECTION OF PHONE RECORDS IS ILLEGAL, APPEALS COURT SAYS<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>A federal appeals court panel\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/pdfserver.amlaw.com\/nlj\/NSA_ca2_20150507.pdf\">ruled<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday that the NSA\u2019s bulk collection of metadata of phone calls to and from Americans is not authorized by Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, throwing out the government\u2019s legal justification for the surveillance program exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden nearly two years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Gerard E. Lynch, writing the opinion for the unanimous three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, described as \u201cunprecedented and unwarranted\u201d the government\u2019s argument that the all-encompassing collection of phone records was allowed because it was \u201crelevant\u201d to an authorized investigation.<\/p>\n<p>The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, and ACLU attorney Alex Abdo told\u00a0<em>The Intercept, \u201c<\/em>This ruling should make clear, once and for all, that the NSA\u2019s bulk collection of Americans\u2019 phone records is unlawful. And it should cast into doubt the unknown number of other mass surveillance operations of the NSA that rely on a similarly flawed interpretation of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As Lynch wrote in the court\u2019s opinion: \u201cTo obtain a \u00a7 215 order, the government must provide the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] with \u2018a statement of facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation (other than a threat assessment).&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lynch continued:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The government emphasizes that \u201crelevance\u201d is an extremely generous standard, particularly in the context of\u00a0the grand jury investigations to which the statute analogizes orders under \u00a7 215. Appellants argue that relevance is not an unlimited concept, and that the government\u2019s own use (or non-use) of the records obtained demonstrates that most of the records sought are not relevant to any particular investigation.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NSA\u2019S BULK COLLECTION OF PHONE RECORDS IS ILLEGAL, APPEALS COURT SAYS A federal appeals court panel\u00a0ruled\u00a0on Thursday that the NSA\u2019s bulk collection of metadata of phone calls to and from Americans is not authorized by Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, throwing out the government\u2019s legal justification for the surveillance program exposed by NSA [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2172,2171,5263,5261,3353,577,652,765,5264,5262],"class_list":["post-7934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-aclu","tag-american-civil-liberties-union","tag-appeals-court","tag-bulk-phone-record-collection","tag-metadata","tag-nsa","tag-privacy","tag-surveillance","tag-us-supreme-court","tag-usa-patriot-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7935,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7934\/revisions\/7935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}