An 85-page once-secret court ruling released publicly Wednesday revealed that intelligence authorities unlawfully collected the e-mail communication of tens of thousands of Americans over several years, violating constitutionally protected privacy interests.
The advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation sued to obtain a copy of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruling, which was issued in October 2011. The Obama administration, having pledged recently to declassify and publish select opinions of the court and other National Security Agency information, posted online a redacted version.
