NSA Spying Ruled Illegal. Oh Really?

A federal judge has recently ruled that the NSA’s phone record surveillance program was likely to be breaching the Constitution. Well, everyone knew that, but now it was said aloud, in the court and by the judge. He said that the NSA’s controversial program violates the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protecting citizens against unauthorized searches and seizures.

The program developed by National Security Agency collects records of the time and phone numbers of every phone call in the United States, and it allows that database to be queried for connections to suspected terrorists. Media reports say that the judge “couldn’t imagine a more indiscriminate and arbitrary invasion than this regular and high-tech collection and retention of personal information on every citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing without judicial approval”.

The judge is sure that the author of the constitution, James Madison, the person who was anti-democracy and believed legislators should be “disinterested” and act against the wishes of constituents, would be aghast by these authorities’ antics. This court ruling came down after conservative activist Larry Klayman filed a lawsuit against PRISM this past summer. The lawsuit claimed that the surveillance program violated the Constitution of the United States, along with federal laws, including the clear breach of privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the due process rights of US people.

So, the judge ordered the US government to stop collecting the phone records of the plaintiff and to destroy the records the agency already collected. However, he also stayed that order, thus allowing the government to argue that PRISM doesn’t violate the Constitution.