BREAKING: Federal Appeals Court Rules That The NSA’s Massive Surveillance Program Is Illegal

A unanimous panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held on Thursday that the National Security Agency’s sweeping database of U.S. phone calls is not authorized by federal law.

The database, which the public learned about after Edward Snowden leaked a court order concerning the NSA’s surveillance activities in 2013, is truly breathtaking in its scope. Snowden leaked an order directing to telephone company Verizon to produce “all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’’ relating to Verizon communications within the United States or between the United States and abroad,” and the federal government did not “seriously dispute” a claim that “all significant service providers in the United States are subject to similar orders.” Though the database does not include the actual content of people’s calls, the metadata held by the NSA does include “details about telephone calls, including, for example, the length of a call, the phone number from which the call was made, and the phone number called.” READ MORE