Federal Judge Rules NSA Bulk Phone Data Collection Likely Unconstitutional

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled in Klayman v. Obama that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of American telephone metadata likely violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. In a strongly-worded 68-page opinion, Judge Leon described the NSA’s surveillance apparatus as “almost-Orwellian technology” that is “unlike anything that could have been conceived in 1979” when the Supreme Court decided Smith v. Maryland, the case the government cited to justify the program.

Judge Leon found that plaintiffs Larry Klayman and Charles Strange had “demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success” in their constitutional challenge. He wrote: “I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval. Surely, such a program infringes on ’that degree of privacy’ that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.”

The ruling granted a preliminary injunction against the NSA’s collection of phone metadata for the two plaintiffs, though Judge Leon stayed his own order pending appeal to give the government time to challenge the decision. He expressed skepticism about the government’s claims that the bulk collection program was essential to national security, noting that the government had failed to cite “a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the Government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature.”

This marked the first time a federal judge had ruled against the NSA’s bulk surveillance program exposed by Edward Snowden. The decision directly contradicted secret FISA court rulings that had repeatedly authorized the program. Judge Leon’s opinion represented a major legal victory for privacy advocates and added judicial weight to public concerns about mass surveillance. However, the ruling was later overturned on jurisdictional grounds by an appeals court, leaving the core constitutional questions unresolved. Nonetheless, the decision put significant pressure on Congress and the Obama administration to reform NSA surveillance practices.