N.S.A. Phone Surveillance Is Lawful, Federal Judge Rules

New York Times ^ | December 27, 2013 | MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and ADAM LIPTAK

[lbryce]

A federal judge in New York on Friday ruled that the National Security Agency’s program that is systematically keeping phone records of all Americans is lawful, creating a conflict among lower courts and increasing the likelihood that the issue will be resolved by the Supreme Court.

In the ruling, Judge William H. Pauley III, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, granted a motion filed by the federal government to dismiss a challenge to the program brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had tried to halt the program.

Judge Pauley said that protections under the Fourth Amendment do not apply to records held by third parties, like phone companies.

[WayneS]

Further evidence that Thomas Jefferson was 100% correct in his assessment of the judicial branch of our federal government:

The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped.

-- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821