WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court in New York on Thursday ruled that the once-secret National Security Agency program that is systematically collecting Americans’ phone records in bulk is illegal. The decision comes as a fight in Congress is intensifying over whether to end and replace the program, or to extend it.

In a 97-page ruling, a three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a provision of the USA Patriot Act permitting the Federal Bureau of Investigation to collect business records deemed relevant to a counterterrorism investigation cannot be legitimately interpreted to permit the systematic bulk collection of domestic calling records.

The ruling was certain to increase the tension that has been building in Congress because the provision of the Patriot Act that has been cited to justify the bulk data collection program will expire in June unless lawmakers pass a bill to extend it.

It is the first time a higher-level court in the regular judicial system has reviewed the program, which since 2006 has repeatedly been approved in secret by a national security court.

The court, in a decision written by Judge Gerard E. Lynch, held that the Patriot Act provision, known as Section 215, “cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and that it does not authorize the telephone metadata program.”

In declaring the program illegal, the judges said, “We do so comfortably in the full understanding that if Congress chooses to authorize such a far‐reaching and unprecedented program, it has every opportunity to do so, and to do so unambiguously.”

The House appears ready to pass a bill next week that would end the government’s bulk collection of phone records, but it has faced resistance from the Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader.

A similar bill died in the Senate in November after Mr. McConnell urged Republicans to block an up-or-down vote on it with a filibuster. Mr. McConnell urged a “clean extension” of Section 215 this time so the program could continue in its present form.

The appeals court did not reach a separate claim by the plaintiffs, the American Civil Liberties Union, that the program also violated the Constitution. It overturned a ruling in December 2013 by a Federal District Court judge that the program was lawful. Parallel cases are pending before two other appeals courts.


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/us...als-court.html


Huh?!!
tapping all americans phones and data and saving for later is not constitutional?
It's Illegal? really? You don't say!!!


But i have to also point out that It's R's (who claim they LOVE the constitution, TEA PARTY YEAH!!) who are trying to keep this ILLEGAL unconstitutional practice going.
Let's Love the 2nd amendment but love the 4th, 5th and 8th too please. thanks!!


But I have been told that if courts or congress or the president says it's constitutional then it's is constitutional and legal. What the constitution says in plain english doesn't really count.