United States District Judge Richard Leon has affirmed his 2013 ruling and has ordered the NSA to stop collecting phone records belonging to J.J. Little and his firm J.J. Little & Associates, P.C., and to segregate all the records collected to date so that they aren't searched.
The NSA's legal authorization to continues the program is set to expire in 20 days anyway, and the ruling only applies to two plaintiffs but the judge's wording in his decision can be easily applied to future plaintiffs, suggesting that if Congress were to re-authorize bulk phone collection, Americans would be able to get court orders banning the practice.
United States District Judge Richard Leon issued the order in Klayman v. Obama, a case in which EFF appeared as amicus curiae. Judge Leon ruled in December 2013 that the program was unconstitutional because it violated the 4th Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches. But the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit sent the case back to him when it held that the plaintiffs in the case did not have standing to sue because they were Verizon Wireless customers, not Verizon Business Network Services (VBNS) customers, and the latter is the only provider the US government has acknowledged participated in the program. The plaintiff then amended the complaint and added two more plaintiffs, J.J. Little and his firm J.J. Little & Associates, P.C., both of which are long-standing VBNS customers.Judge Leon found that these two new plaintiffs had standing to sue the NSA both over the past phone records collection as well as the ongoing collection. He then issued a preliminary injunction barring the NSA from further collection and querying of their records that had already been collected.
NSA Ordered to Stop Collecting, Querying Plaintiffs' Phone Records
[David Greene/EFF]
