Washington: In a setback to the Obama administration, a judge today ruled that the controversial mass surveillance of phone records by US intelligence was “arbitrary” and “indiscriminate”, raising a question mark on the spy programme intended to prevent terrorist attacks.
Federal District Judge Richard Leon said the National Security Agency's practice, which came to light following the leaks by fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden, was an “arbitrary invasion” of American citizens' privacy.
The agency's collection of “metadata” including telephone numbers and times and dates of calls was exposed by ex-CIA analyst Snowden who fled the US to avoid prosecution and is now living in asylum in Russia.
In his ruling in a Washington DC federal court, Leon called the NSA's surveillance programme “indiscriminate” and an “almost Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyse the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States”.
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