The U.S. National Security Agency's bulk collection and storage of phone metadata does not violate U.S. laws or its constitution, according to a federal judge's decision released Friday.
U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III ruled in favor of the NSA and against the American Civil Liberties Union, a government watchdog non-profit, in a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York.
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"There is no evidence that the Government has used any of the bulk telephony metadata it collected for any purpose other than investigating and disrupting terrorist attacks," Pauley wrote.
The decision comes less than two weeks after another federal judge, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, called the same metadata collection program "almost Orwellian" and ruled that it likely violates the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. Pauley addressed this argument in Friday's decision.
"The right to be free from search and seizures is fundamental, but not absolute," he wrote. "Whether the Fourth Amendment protects bulk telephony metadata is ultimately a questions of reasonableness."
The ACLU filed its first document in the case, a formal complaint, on June 11, just days after the first media reports of the NSA's vast data-gathering capabilities surfaced. We've since learned a great deal more about those capabilities, thanks in large part to secret documents former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked to journalists.
Pauley does not dispute the NSA's "Orwellian" strategies in his decision, he rather affirms the rationale for the programs, which NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have frequently defended during the past several months.
"No doubt, the bulk telephony metadata collection program vacuums up information about virtually every telephone call to, from, or within the United States," Pauley wrote. "That is by design, as it allows the NSA to detect relationships so attenuated and ephemeral they would otherwise escape notice."
Last week, an independent council commissioned by President Barack Obama to investigate the NSA's practices released a 300-page report detailing 46 recommended changes to the agency's practices to help restore the public's confidence in the governmental surveillance programs.
The panel's most notable recommendations was that the NSA should end its telephone metadata program. Instead, it suggested private phone companies or other private third parties should collect and hold the records. The NSA could then access the data through a court order when necessary and appropriate.
Pauley, in his decision, reasoned that the government has less inclination than third parties to misuse citizens' personal data.
"Every day, people voluntarily surrender personal and seemingly-private information to transnational corporations, which exploit that data for profit," Pauley wrote. "Few think twice about it, even though it is far more intrusive than bulk telephony metadata collection."
Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU's deputy legal director, told Mashable via email: "We are extremely disappointed with this decision, which misinterprets the relevant statutes, understates the privacy implications of the government’s surveillance and misapplies a narrow and outdated precedent to read away core constitutional protections. As another federal judge and the president’s own review group concluded last week, the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephony data constitutes a serious invasion of Americans’ privacy. We intend to appeal and look forward to making our case in the Second Circuit.”
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