U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III said Friday that the program, which collects virtually all Americans’ phone records, represents the U.S. government’s “counter-punch” to eliminate the al-Qaeda terrorist network and does not violate the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure.
The NSA program collects records of the numbers that Americans call and the duration of those calls, but not content. Civil liberties advocates have argued that the collection and storage of that data represent a violation of Americans’ right to privacy.
In a series of decisions made in secret since 2006, judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which hears only the government’s side of cases, also held that the program is lawful.
In a Dec. 16 ruling, however, a District Court judge rejected the government’s arguments in a strongly worded ruling that said the program “infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.”
Congress is debating whether the NSA’s powers should be curtailed. A panel appointed by President Obama recommended that the NSA should no longer store the data. Obama said that in January he will make a statement on what NSA reforms he supports.
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