2nd Circuit In ACLU v. Clapper: NSA Went Far Beyond Congressional Intent In Applying PATRIOT Sec. 215

Many of us have said this all along, and now the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has confirmed it: what the NSA has done in accumulating telephone records purportedly under the PATRIOT Act Sec. 215 went far beyond what Congress authorized when it passed that law. As Andrew Crocker at Electronic Frontier Foundation (via Informed Comment) said,

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... The court completely rejected the government’s secret reinterpretation of Section 215 that has served as the basis for the telephone records collection program. ...

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I personally regard all secret law and secret interpretation as invalid, if for no other reason than that it is not possible to comply with a law or interpretation to which one does not know the text.

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AFTERTHOUGHT: please read Crocker's article in detail. This is a stronger decision than I thought at first. One can only hope it survives the Supreme Court in that Court's current partisan configuration.