01-13-2016
On May 7th, 2015, a three judge panel for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals became the first appellate court to rule on the legality of a government surveillance program, put in place in the interests of national security.
The claims in A.C.L.U. v Clapper, brought after the surveillance was revealed by Edward Snowden 2013, raised statutory and constitutional challenges to the National Security Agency’s (NSA) “telephone metadata program.” Under this program, the NSA collects metadata associated with telephone calls made by Americans, and aggregates it into a data bank where it can be searched. This data is created by telephone companies in their normal course of business, but under the program companies are explicitly required to give that information to the government on an o...
