A very large monkey wrench has just been thrown into Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's plan to
extend the Patriot Act, including Section 215 which the government argues allows bulk collection of call data, with no reforms. A unanimous decision from a three-judge panel on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals
rules that the bulk collection program is illegal.
The court's ruling came in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union arguing the data collection should be stopped because it violates Americans' privacy rights. A lower court judge ruled the program was constitutional, and the civil liberties group appealed, leading to Thursday's decision.
"The text of (Section 215) cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and...does not authorize the telephone metadata program," the court wrote.
The court declined to address the issue of whether the program violates Americans' rights, because, they found, it was never properly authorized by existing law.
Because the law's reauthorization is now pending in Congress, with a deadline at the end of this month, the court did not order the program be stopped. It also left open a future ruling on the privacy issues depending on what Congress does to curtail the program in this rewrite. Given this ruling, McConnell will have to abandon his plan to try to force a clean extension of the law. It's unclear now where the House will go with its version of the bill which does include some restrictions of the program.