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You can read Leon's full 68-page ruling, but here's the crux:I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval.He stayed the order, to be sure, allowing for what should be the inevitable NSA appeal. And while the injuction doesn't call for any sort of clear-cut ruling on the constitutionality of the case, it does leave room for whichever side Leon believes will win.Leon also went on to add that the Justice Department doesn't have a leg to stand on when it claims it demonstrated that potential terrorist attacks were squashed on account of the NSA's scooping of almost incomprehensibly large amounts of information. For the last seven years, the DoJ persuaded judges on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that "the collection of information on the time and length of calls, as well as the numbers called, did not amount to a search under the Fourth Amendment" as that very information is regularly at the disposal of telephone firms for billing purposes and is also shared voluntarily with said firms, according to Politico.Larry Klayman to me on NSA suit: "I'm not trying to beat my own chest, but this is the equivalent of winning the Superbowl."
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) December 16, 2013
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