The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday asked a federal appeals court to vacate a judge’s ruling that the National Security Agency’s mass collection of Americans’ telephone records is legal.
In a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the ACLU said Southern District Judge William Pauley erred in December when he held that the NSA’s “metadata” collection program did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Pauley said the program was justified as a “counter-punch” to eliminate al Qaida’s networks following the horrific attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (NYLJ, Dec. 30, 2013).
