A three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the NSA’s mass telephone surveillance operation violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and was illegal. The decision repeatedly cited Edward Snowden’s exposure of this illegal program, and ruled that after having reviewed classified documents presented by the government, they concluded that U.S. intelligence officials’ justification of the program as having helped block terrorism, were not true; i.e., that they lied. The panel acknowledged that the “24-hour surveillance” under the NSA program was probably unconstitutional, violating the Fourth Amendment, but wrote that because a ruling on its constitutionality was not material to the specific case being appealed, the Court did not take that up. The judges chose, in other words, to not “go there.”
Coming only a few weeks after President Donald Trump mooted the possibility of pardoning Snowden, the court ruling ups the heat on that front. Citing the decision, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz joined the call for President Trump to pardon Snowden. Sen. Rand Paul re-tweeted Gaetz’s call, adding: “This is important. @Snowden exposed illegal and unconstitutional actions by the Deep State, including Clapper and others who went after @realDonaldTrump and lied about it.”
Snowden was ecstatic. “Seven years ago, as the news declared I was being charged as a criminal for speaking the truth, I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA’s activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them. And yet that day has arrived,” he responded in one of many tweets.
