Monday, December 16, 2013

Three Cheers for Judge Leon


America’s founding fathers would be “aghast” at the NSA’s bulk telephone metadata spying, a federal judge today said, finding that the program violates the Fourth Amendment and the legal argument justifying it is “the stuff of science fiction.”

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, in Washington D.C., called the NSA program “almost-Orwellian,” and ordered the NSA to stop collecting or analyzing the metadata of the two men who sued. But citing national security, Leon stayed his order pending resolution in the appellate courts.

It was the first time a district court judge has ever sided against the NSA program, and several other lawsuits across the nation are pending.

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