NSA surveillance program violates the constitution, ACLU says

Karen McVeigh in New York
theguardian.com, Tuesday 27 August 2013 20.31 BST

The National Security Agency's mass tracking and collection of Americans' phone call data violates the constitution, has a chilling effect on first amendment rights and should be halted, accord to a court motion filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday.

In a detailed, legal critique of the NSA programme, the ACLU warned that such long-term surveillance "permits the government to assemble a richly detailed profile of every person living in the United States and to draw a comprehensive map of their associations with one another."

The motion is part of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU in June, one of several against the NSA following the Guardian's disclosures via whistleblower Edward Snowden, of the agency's mass surveillance of US citizens. Documents from Snowden revealed a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order directing Verizon to give the NSA all call detail records or "metadata" relating to every domestic and international call for three months, in a court direction that is renewed on an ongoing basis.

It "allows surveillance that is essentially indefinite", the motion says.

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