ACLU: It’s Up to District Court To Address Which Unlawfully Collected Call Records the Government Must Purge

While the American Civil Liberties Union disagrees with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to deny a motion for a preliminary injunction (see 1510290070), the group said all Americans should celebrate that bulk collection of call records ends in a few weeks. The injunction would have barred the government from collecting call records under the phone metadata program, required it to quarantine call records already collected under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, and prohibited it from querying metadata obtained through the program using any phone number or other identifier associated with them. It’s now “up to the district court to address to what extent the government must purge the call records it collected unlawfully,” ACLU attorney Alex Abdo, who argued the case, said in an emailed statement to us. “In the meantime, the government still needs to rein in other overreaching NSA spying programs," he said.