NSA Phone Program Probably Unconstitutional, Judge Rules

‘Talking Point’

“It robs the government of its talking point that the courts have never found there to be a meaningful privacy interest in phone records,” he said. “This decision absolutely should shift the debate.”

Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, rejected the assertion by President Barack Obama’s administration that Americans don’t have a right to privacy for records showing phone numbers called and the duration of the connection.

The administration, and the foreign intelligence court, have relied on a 1979 Supreme Court ruling that such data isn’t protected by the Fourth Amendment.

“The almost-Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States is unlike anything that could have been conceived in 1979,” Leon wrote.

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