Court overturns NSA phone record collection ruling

The 2013 decision ordering the US National Security Agency (NSA) to stop its collection of phone records has been overturned by a federal appeals court, which determined that a privacy advocate did not sufficiently demonstrate his data was collected through the program.

According to TechCrunch and the Wall Street Journal, the three-judge panel issued its decision on Friday, as two of those judges wrote that they doubted longtime conservative activist named Larry Klayman would be able to prove that his phone records had been collected under the NSA surveillance program, and thus did not have standing to bring the case.

In the decision, Judge Janice Rogers Brown’s said that Klayman and his fellow plantiffs had not shown a “‘concrete and particularized’ injury” associated with the NSA data collection program, and Judge Stephen Williams wrote that the plaintiffs “lack direct evidence that records involving their calls have actually been collected” by the agency.

Judge Rodgers Brown added that “regulations of this sort may frustrate the inquisitive citizen but that does not make them illegal or illegitimate.” She and Williams ruled to vacate the preliminary injunction, while the third judge, David Sentelle, noted that he would have completely dismissed the case, as the plantiffs had not proved that they were harmed by the program.

Recently passed laws call for scaled-back data collection efforts

Klayman called the decision “an outrage,” telling the WSJ that “an ill-informed first-year law student could have written this in one day. This is why Donald Trump is so popular right now, because every branch of government – including the judiciary which is supposed to protect us from the tyranny of the government – has broken down.”

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Alex Abdo downplayed the significance of the ruling, telling reporters that it was nothing more than “a procedural decision that does not address the constitutionality or legality of the NSA’s surveillance program.” The ACLU noted that a New York-based appeals court would hear arguments on NSA surveillance over the next week.

The verdict comes after Congress passed legislation ending the bulk collection of phone records by the government agency. The old NSA program will be replaced by a system in which phone companies will retain the data, and the government will be able to search it only when authorized to by a court. The scaled-back data collection program will go into effect next year.

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Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/Trevor Paglen