NSA’s phone tapping unconstitutional: US judge

A federal judge said yesterday that he believed the government's once-secret collection of domestic phone records was unconstitutional which, according to commentators, would likely set the stage for further challenges to the data mining revealed by classified leaker Edward Snowden, CNN reports.

According to US district judge Richard Leon, the National Security Agency's bulk collection of metadata - phone records of the time and numbers called without any disclosure of content - apparently violated privacy rights.

"I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary invasion' than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every citizen for purposes of querying and analysing it without prior judicial approval," said Leon, an appointee of president George W Bush. "Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment."

Leon's ruling said the "plaintiffs in this case have also shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits of a Fourth Amendment claim," adding "as such, they too have adequately demonstrated irreparable injury."

While rejecting the government's argument that a 1979 Maryland case provided precedent for the constitutionality of collecting phone metadata, he noted that the public use of telephones had increased dramatically in the past three decades.

He added that the government "does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA's bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature."

According to CNN's senior legal analyst Jeffery Loogin, the ruling was a narrow one applying only to the two people who brought the case. The judgment meant the government would need to stop collecting data on the two people, and the whole issue would be put on hold until an appeals court decided, he added.

According to him nothing really changed with the judgment, except that the legal landscape looked different. He further said it was the first time someone had said what the NSA did was illegal and that was politically and legally significant.

Meanwhile, one of Brazil's biggest newspapers said it had obtained a letter from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, asking for political asylum and offering to help Brazil investigate US spying on its soil, Fox News reports.

In the letter published on the website of Folha de S Paulo early today, Snowden said he could legally offer assistance only if he was granted asylum.

Snowden is now living in Russia, where he has been granted temporary asylum for a year.