DOJ defends NSA phone records program after judge's ruling

The Department of Justice defended the National Security Agency's massive phone records collection program after a US District Court judge ruled that the program is likely to violate the Constitution.

Fifteen judges in the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have approved the program on 35 separate occasions. Leon's ruling, if it stands, may set up a Supreme Court case to arbitrate between Leon's decision and the FISA court, said Ross Schulman, public policy and regulatory counsel at the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a tech trade group that's been critical of the NSA program. "It is encouraging to see the judiciary taking up the important questions of metadata analysis and realizing the great insights about one's life that can be gleaned from such large sets of information," Schulman said. "While this kind of large-scale data crunching can lead to great advances in medicine, transportation, and even simply movie rentals, it raises serious concerns when governments do it to pick out the relationships between its citizens."