NSA Mass Phone Record Collection Ruled Illegal
Nearly seven years after it was revealed to the public by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency’s mass phone record collection program has been ruled illegal by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The program scooped up metadata about billions of phone records in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack, though not the contents of the calls themselves. The program itself was reportedly shut down last year, though Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which authorized the collection, remains in murky legislative territory. We reported on the Section 215 program, as well as many others, in our series Keeping Up with the Snoops, which saw most of its traffic from December 2013 until June 2015.
Is anyone truly that naive to not understand that intelligence agencies have been doing this far longer than the Patriot Act and it’s not merely metadata?
But does it matter? In my city, plainclothes agents in unmarked vans have been pulling citizens off the street and detaining them without charges. I’m not sure we live under the rule of law anymore.
Even if we are, the Ninth Circuit’s ruling may be overturned.