1st LD Writethru: U.S. court says NSA phone record collection illegal

A U.S. federal appeals court on Thursday said a National Security Agency (NSA) program that collected the records of millions of Americans' phone calls was not authorized by Congress.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said in a 97-page opinion that the laws used as a basis for the bulk data collection "have never been interpreted to authorize anything approaching the breadth of the sweeping surveillance at issue here."

The court said the government went far beyond what Congress intended in Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which was designed to counter terrorism.

However, the court permitted the National Security Agency program to continue temporarily as it exists, and all but pleaded for Congress to better define where the boundaries exist.

"There is no evidence that Congress intended for those statutes to authorize the bulk collection of every American's toll billing or educational records and to aggregate them into a database," the court's panel said in the opinion.

"If Congress decides to authorize the collection of the data desired by the government under conditions identical to those now in place, the program will continue in the future under that authorization," it said.

"If Congress decides to institute a substantially modified program, the constitutional issues will certainly differ considerably from those currently raised," it added.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against the NSA and FBI, following disclosures about the vast surveillance programs in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who remains exiled in Russia.

The metadata collected from millions of phone calls includes the numbers called, times and other information but not the content of conversations. Still, civil liberties advocates argue the program is a massive intrusion on privacy. Endi