U.S. judge says NSA phone surveillance is lawful

By way of Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal decide dominated that a National Security Company software that collects data of tens of millions of Americans' phone calls is lawful, calling it a "counter-punch" to terrorism that does not violate Americans' privateness rights. Friday's decision through U.S. District Judge William Pauley in Manhattan diverged from a ruling via another judge this month that questioned the program's constitutionality, elevating the prospect that the Supreme Court docket will need to resolve the problem. In a fifty four-web page choice, Pauley disregarded an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit contending that the NSA collection of "bulk telephony metadata" violated the bar in opposition to warrantless searches underneath the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Structure. The judge additionally referred incessantly to the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which virtually 3,000 people died, and stated huge counter-terrorism programs such because the NSA's could assist keep away from a "horrific" repeat of those events.