In an opinion today, the Second Circuit reversed a decision by Judge Pauley (see our prior posts on the case here), and ruled that the NSA’s bulk collection of phone data is unlawful. Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the government to collect “tangible things” that are “relevant” to an “authorized investigation” of terrorism, but the Second Circuit found that bulk collection did not meet the test of relevance:
Continue Reading Second Circuit Declares NSA’s Bulk Phone Data Collection Unlawful

In an opinion today, Judge Pauley dismissed the ACLU’s challenge to the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone metadata and denied the ACLU’s motion for a preliminary injunction.  The opinion begins:

The September 11th terrorist attacks revealed, in the starkest terms, just how dangerous and interconnected the world is. While Americans depended on technology for the conveniences of modernity, al-Qaeda plotted in a seventh-century milieu to use that technology against us. It was a bold jujitsu. And it succeeded because conventional intelligence gathering could not detect diffuse filaments connecting al-Qaeda.
Continue Reading Judge Pauley Dismisses Challenge to NSA Bulk Collection of Phone Data