The NSA’s secret service collecting metadata from US citizens was illegal, a US Court of Appeals, one of the highest courts in the country, ruled. The court reached that decision in a case that was about something completely different.
In the ruling, put online by the civil rights organization ACLU, the court ruled that the large-scale collection of telephony metadata in the United States, as Edward Snowden revealed in 2013, was illegal. The program has already been discontinued in 2015.
The crux was that the NSA could indicate afterwards that among the millions of collected telephone numbers, one telephone number was relevant to the case, while according to the legislation that applied to it, this should have been done in advance.
The court does not want to conclude whether the data collection violates the constitution. The court does not rule on it because it is irrelevant to the evidence of the case, which concerns four Somalis who sent money to their home countries to support a terrorist organization. The court does call the data collection ‘possibly unconstitutional’. This is a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Whistleblower Snowden is happy with the verdict. “Seven years ago, when the news was that I was going to be charged as a criminal for speaking the truth, I never thought I would see our courts denounce the NSA’s activities as illegal and in the same ruling credits me. would give for bringing it to light. That day has now come. “
It is unknown what the consequences will be of the ruling. The appeals court is the second highest court in the United States. Only the Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court, can overturn a ruling of this court. This happens in 2.5 percent of the cases.