Judges Skeptical NSA Spying Violates Privacy Rights …

A federal appeals court appears largely unconvinced that the government's once-secret practice of collecting virtually all Americans' phone records violates the Constitution.

A panel of three Republican-nominated judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals challenged arguments made Tuesday by a conservative activist and civil-liberties groups that the National Security Agency's mass-surveillance program represents a breach of the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches.

That spy program, exposed by Edward Snowden last year, allows the government to collect from telephone companies, such as Verizon and AT&T, the "metadata" records of their customers. Metadata includes the numbers, dates, and duration of calls but not the actual contents of conversations.

The case, Klayman v. Obama, is one of three currently at the appeals-court level that is weighing NSA surveillance. The New York-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals held a review in September and appeared more sympathetic at the time to the concerns of privacy advocates. Many observers expect some combination of these cases to reach the Supreme Court as soon as next year, but much of that may depend on whether Congress decides to pass legislation that would reform certain aspects of the NSA's spying apparatus.

While privacy advocates have argued that metadata collection has the potential to be abused and can be extremely intrusive, two of the three judges repeatedly voiced skepticism that the mere collection of those recordswhich are already maintained by telecom companiesposes any threat to ordinary citizens.

Judge Stephen Williams indicated that violations to privacy were more likely to occur when intelligence officials actually analyze metadata, which he said was "two steps" removed from the collection stage.

Larry Klayman, a conservative lawyer arguing on his own behalf, countered that "just collecting the data is enough to implicate the Fourth Amendment."

Williams pressed Klayman to articulate specifically how the mere collection of troves of unanalyzed data could violate an American's privacy. But Williams remained unsatisfied with Klayman's response.

"You still aren't answering my question," Williams interrupted at one point. "What are the invasions?"

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Judges Skeptical NSA Spying Violates Privacy Rights ...