US court deems NSA bulk phone-call snooping illegal, possibly unconstitutional, and probably pointless anyway

US court deems NSA bulk phone-call snooping illegal, possibly unconstitutional, and probably pointless anyway

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled [PDF] that the National Security Agency's phone-call slurping was indeed naughty, seven years after former contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the tawdry affair.


It's been a long time coming, and while some might view the decision as a slap for officials that defended the practice, the three-judge panel said the part played by the NSA programme wasn't sufficient to undermine the convictions of four individuals for conspiring to send funds to Somalia in support of a terrorist group.


Snowden made public the existence of the NSA data collection programmes in court deems phone snooping illegal possibly unconstitutional probably pointless anyway