Appeals court rules against NSA phone records collection

The U.S. National Security Agency’s program to collect domestic telephone records in bulk was not authorized by Congress in the Patriot Act, an appeals court has ruled.

The NSA’s phone records program violates U.S. law because it “exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized,” a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled.

The appeals court vacated a December 2013 ruling by a district court judge who granted the government a motion to dismiss the case, but upheld the district court decision to deny plaintiffs, including the American Civil Liberties Union, a preliminary injunction to halt the so-called phone metadata collection program.

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