By Cliff Montgomery – May 12th, 2015
Now it’s official.
Last week, a U.S. appeals court ruled that the National Security Agency’s massive collection of telephone records is illegal.
“A provision of the USA Patriot Act permitting the Federal Bureau of Investigation to collect business records deemed relevant to a counter-terrorism investigation cannot be legitimately interpreted to permit the systematic bulk collection of domestic calling records,” declared the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York last week.
The judges’ ruling overturned a 2013 decision on the matter. But the appeals court did not go so far as to declare the entire program unconstitutional. It simply urged Congress to change the manner of data collection, so that it might fit U.S. constitutional standards.
The NSA’s data collection program was revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, who had worked as a contractor for the agency. After Snowden revealed the existence of the illegal program, shame-faced American politicians screamed for his head. He left the United States to escape political retaliation, and currently resides in Russia.
The illegal government program collected information on massive numbers of people, including those who were not suspected of committing a crime. The data program recorded the phone numbers those individuals contacted throughout the day, and the times during which those calls were made. It apparently did not record the content of those conversations.
Among those watched by the NSA was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who of course is not suspected of being a terrorist. It appears that the U.S. agency also spied on a number of European firms.
The German people know all about the inherent dangers of allowing government agents to spy on innocent citizens. When they found out about the NSA’s spying activities, they began to insist that the U.S. agency provide a “clear justification” for every search.
It appears that the NSA could not perform that simple task to the standards demanded by the German people. Thus their officials have “drastically reduced” their internet data collection for the U.S. agency, according to reports.
The appeals court decision comes at a crucial time for Congress. This week, the U.S. House may vote on legislation called the USA Freedom Act-if made into law, it would end outright the NSA’s data collection program.
But Congress is rarely that reasonable. A number of senators have expressed a strong desire to keep the NSA program, and presumably will work to change the law just enough to give it the patina of legality.
The matter comes down to whether those senators successfully extend the life of a single provision buried in the so-called ‘USA Patriot Act’. That provision, Section 215 of the Act, has served as the NSA’s legal justification for its data collection program – it is slated to expire this June. But senators may change the provision just enough to please the courts and then vote to extend the provision’s life for a while longer, which might allow a modified form of the NSA program to continue.
But many privacy experts are voicing a belief that the data collection program in its current state may soon be a thing of the past.
“The appeals court’s careful ruling should end any debate about whether the NSA’s phone-records program is lawful,” the American Civil Liberty Union’s deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer told BBC News.
