Starvin Larry

Yesterday, a three judge panel of the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the NSA’s mass collection of all Americans’ phone metadata is not authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, and is therefore illegal. The ruling has limited implications, because Section 215 is scheduled to expire at the end of this month, and it is not clear if Congress will extend, modify, or allow it expire. However, Judge Gerard Lynch’s opinion had some harsh things to say about bulk collection of metadata.

The statutes to which the government points have never been interpreted to authorize anything approaching the breadth of the sweeping surveillance at issue here. The sheer volume of information sought is staggering….

The government takes the position that the metadata collected – a vast amount of which does not contain directly “relevant” information, as the government concedes – are nevertheless “relevant” because they may…