NSA’s domestic phone surveillance reauthorized

last updated 8 January 2015

A secretive spy court renewed the National Security Agency’s authority to collect the telephone records of every American for another 90 days. It was the 36th time in seven years that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court re-authorized the bulk snooping, but the decision comes amid conflicting rulings in two other federal courts about whether the data collection program is constitutional. Last month, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that the program was likely unlawful, calling it an overreach into the private sphere. A federal judge in New York subsequently disagreed, saying the program did not violate privacy rights and calling it a “counterpunch” to terrorism that “only works because it collects everything.”