Judge had rebuked NSA for misleading 'secret court'
Federal judge finds the spying agency violated the Constitution and its officials exhibited a continuing pattern of misrepresentation
A US federal judge sharply rebuked the National Security Agency in 2011 for repeatedly misleading the court that oversees its surveillance on domestic soil, including a programme that is collecting tens of thousands of domestic e-mails and other internet communications of Americans each year, according to a secret ruling that has now been made public.
The 85-page ruling by Judge John Bates, then serving as chief judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, involved an NSA programme that searches the contents of Americans' international internet communications without a warrant in a hunt for discussions about foreigners who have been targeted for surveillance.
The Justice Department had told Bates that NSA officials had discovered that the programme had also been gathering domestic messages for three years.
Bates found that the agency had violated the Constitution and declared the problems part of a pattern of misrepresentation by agency officials in submissions to the secret court.
The release of the ruling on Wednesday was the latest effort by the Obama administration to contain revelations about NSA surveillance prompted by leaks by the former agency contractor Edward Snowden.
The e-mails the agency intercepted from Americans represented a relatively small percentage of the estimated 250 million communications it intercepts each year, according to the ruling. And while the documents show the NSA fixed the problems to the court's satisfaction, they also revealed further issues.