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December 30, 2013

Judge Upholds NSA's Bulk Collection of Phone Data 
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A federal judge has upheld the :National Security
Agency's":http://www.democracynow.org/topics/nsa bulk collection of U.S.
telephone data just days after a separate court reached an opposite
opinion. On Friday, District Judge William Pauley dismissed a lawsuit
from the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the NSA's mass
collection of U.S. phone records. Pauley said telephone metadata could
have potentially prevented the 9/11 attacks by alerting the government
to hijackers who made phone calls from the United States. The issue will
likely head to the Supreme Court. Pauley's ruling comes less than two
weeks after another federal judge questioned the program's
constitutionality and described the bulk collection as "almost
Orwellian."

 

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