Second Circuit Rules NSA Bulk Phone Metadata Collection Illegal Under Patriot Act

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously ruled in ACLU v. Clapper that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephone metadata was not authorized by Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, effectively declaring the surveillance program illegal. Judge Gerard E. Lynch, writing the opinion, described the government’s legal theory—that all-encompassing collection of phone records was “relevant” to an authorized investigation—as “unprecedented and unwarranted.”

The court fundamentally rejected the government’s secret reinterpretation of Section 215, which had been used to justify the bulk surveillance program since 2006. Judge Lynch wrote that Congress could not “reasonably be said to have ratified a program of which many members of Congress—and all members of the public—were not aware.” The ruling emphasized that the statutory language requiring records to be “relevant” to an authorized investigation could not be stretched to encompass the NSA’s indiscriminate collection of virtually all Americans’ calling records.

The decision came just weeks before Section 215 was set to expire on June 1, 2015, placing enormous pressure on Congress to address the NSA’s surveillance authorities. Importantly, the court did not rule on whether the program violated the Fourth Amendment, finding it unnecessary to reach constitutional questions when the program exceeded statutory authority. The judges also noted they were “not unsympathetic” to the government’s national security concerns but emphasized that such concerns could not override the plain meaning of statutory law.

This marked the first time a federal appeals court had reviewed the NSA’s bulk metadata collection program exposed by Edward Snowden’s disclosures. The ruling validated the concerns of privacy advocates and whistleblowers, confirming that the government had been operating an illegal mass surveillance program for nearly a decade under a strained interpretation of the law. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and ACLU hailed the decision as a landmark victory for privacy rights, while the ruling set the stage for the USA FREEDOM Act, which would reform Section 215 to explicitly prohibit bulk collection. The decision vindicated Edward Snowden’s revelations and demonstrated the value of public oversight of secret intelligence programs.