Justice Department
While he disagrees with Leon’s ruling, former NSA Director Michael Hayden told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” today that the upshot is the agency is “going to have to have more transparency to sustain these programs.”
White House press secretary Jay Carney said he hadn’t seen the ruling and referred questions to the Justice Department.
Andrew Ames, a spokesman for the department, said in an e-mail, “We believe the program is constitutional as previous judges have found.” The department is reviewing the decision, he said.
Ed McFadden, a Verizon spokesman, said the company couldn’t immediately comment on the ruling.
U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, a Democrat who heads the chamber’s Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that he welcomed the decision. His committee has held three hearings in recent months on issues addressed in the litigation, he said.
“This is a very significant ruling,” Kevin Bankston, policy director for the Washington-based Open Technology Institute, a policy and research organization, said in a phone interview. The ruling should have “significant implications” for how the White House and Congress deal with the NSA program, he said.