US judge affirms ruling NSA telephony metadata program unconstitutional

A federal judge has affirmed his previous ruling that the National Security Agency’s ( ) telephone collection programme was unconstitutional and has ordered it to stop gathering the phone records of a man and his business.

Washington DC District Court judge Richard Leonsaid it was “substantially likely” the programme was unlawful and that, as such, “the plaintiffs have suffered concrete harm traceable to the challenged program”.

The US government filed a request for an emergency stay of the order on the basis it thinks it will win on appeal following a similar case in October in which judges found in favour of the NSA.

Because of the ruling, the organisation must now quarantine date pertaining to the plaintiff, Larry Klayman, an attorney and founder of Freedom Watch as well as his co-plaintiffs, Charles and Mary Ann Strange.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice said: “The government is reviewing the decision.”

However, the NSA’s bulk metadata collection program is due to end on 29 November, making the ruling largely symbolic.

He said that Klayman v Obama would not “be the last chapter in the ongoing struggle to balance privacy rights and national security interests under our Constitution in an age of evolving technological wizardry”.

The programme was revealed by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden .

He described the ruling as “historic”.

Mr Klayman said in a statement: “The government should now commit to destroying the call records that it collected illegally – not just its database of ‘raw’ data but any subsidiary databases that include query results.”

The judge expressed regret he had not issued an injunction in his December 2013 opinion, saying he stayed his order “pending appeal in light of the national security interests at stake and the novelty of the constitutional issues raised.”

He added: “I did so with the optimistic hope that the appeals process would move expeditiously.

“However, because it has been almost two years since I first found that the NSA’s Bulk Telephony Metadata Program likely violates the Constitution and because the loss of constitutional freedoms for even one day is a significant harm I will not do so today.”