By Cliff Montgomery – Dec. 17th, 2013
A federal judge yesterday released a ferocious rebuke to the Obama Administration’s bulk collection of Americans’ telephone information, declaring the action “almost Orwellian” and probably a fundamental violation of the U.S. Constitution.
District of Columbia Appeals Court Judge Richard Leon – who was appointed by President George W. Bush – issued a scathing ruling on the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance policies, calling for the federal government to halt its mass collection of “bulk telephony meta-data” and further ordered that the NSA destroy all information it already has collected.
But Judge Leon suspended his decision until numerous lawsuits regarding the surveillance programs work through the U.S. court system.
All the same, the judge’s ruling was blunt and precise.
“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” declared the judge.
Judge Leon also rebuffed the Obama Administration’s argument that its spying programs are needed to discover and thwart terrorist plots.
“The Government does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk meta-data collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the Government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature,” Judge Leon stated.
The judge pointed out that U.S. Founding Father James Madison almost certainly would be “aghast” at the Obama Administration’s surveillance activities.
At one point in his ruling, Judge Leon made light of the administration’s suggestion that no meta-data from telephone giant Verizon is collected during its spying activities – comparing it to a ridiculous claim one might make about the Beatles.
“To draw an analogy, if the NSA’s program operates the way the Government suggests it does, then omitting Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and Sprint from the collection would be like omitting John, Paul, and George from a historical analysis of the Beatles. A Ringo-only database doesn’t make any sense, and I cannot believe the Government would create, maintain, and so ardently defend such a system,” declared the judge.
Judge Leon pointed out that the U.S. government’s “war on terrorism” – and its attendant claims of ‘necessary expanded powers during wartime’ – is a state of affairs which “realistically could be forever!”
The judge also stated that when any presumed ‘precedent ruling’ was issued, the NSA’s modern surveillance activities would simply have been “the stuff of science fiction.” He further pointed out the inherent danger to personal liberties when federal officials employ an “almost Orwellian technology that enables the Government to store and analyze the phone meta-data of every telephone user in the United States.”
