Court rules NSA phone snooping illegal — after 7-year delay
But the controversial phone metadata program played little role in the terror-fundraising case at issue, the long-awaited ruling says.
During the public debate over the program — triggered, as the opinion notes in half a dozen places, by disclosures from Snowden — numerous officials pointed to the Moalin prosecution as concrete evidence that the program was contributing to U.S. prosecutions for terrorism. Other examples cited by officials were primarily overseas. And the Moalin case was not about any plans for attacks in the U.S., but in Somalia.
The new 9th Circuit opinion cites congressional testimony by former FBI official Sean Joyce that the metadata program gave agents a break that led to them reopening the investigation into Moalin. But Berzon goes on to suggest that the public claims by Joyce or others were inaccurate because the metadata program did not play a pivotal role.
"To the extent the public statements of government officials created a contrary impression, that impression is inconsistent with the contents of the classified record," she wrote.
Joyce, who retired from the FBI several years ago, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
The metadata program was officially shut down in 2015 after Congress passed the USA FREEDOM Act, which provided a new mechanism where phone providers retained their data instead of turning it over to the government. The revamped system appears to have been abandoned by the NSA in 2018 or 2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment