The NSA can continue to monitor the millions of phone calls Americans make from their cell phones.
The US Freedom Act, which was supposed to rein in the NSA, appears to be powerless in the means the agency uses.
Last Monday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ruled that the NSA can continue to collect data at will for 180 days.
“After considering the Amici briefs, the court finds that the NSA’s continued bulk collection of telephone data during this transitional period remains consistent with both the statute and the Fourth Amendment,” the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.
“The Court’s new primary provision provides that during the transitional period, and in the absence of a genuine state of emergency, telephony metadata may be collected only after a judicial finding that there is a reasonable, well-founded suspicion that they are related to an international terrorist organization.”
The FISC supervisory authority continues to state that intelligence agencies can collect metadata from the caller (target), the recipient's metadata, as well as all contacts of the target and the recipients of their calls (!).
In addition, the US government said it promised to study the FISC decision, and decide whether the content of the surveillances should be classified or not.
