US appeals court rules NSA's 'bulk collection' of documents was illegal and unauthorised by congress

A US appeals court ruled yesterday that the National Security Agency's massive collection of phone records of Americans is illegal because it exceeds the scope of what congress authorised.

The laws used as a basis for the bulk data collection "have never been interpreted to authorise anything approaching the breadth of the sweeping surveillance at issue here," said the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a 97-page opinion.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against the NSA and FBI, following disclosures about the vast surveillance programmes in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The "metadata" collected from millions of phone calls includes the numbers called, times and other information but not the content of conversations. Still, civil liberties advocates argue the programme is a massive intrusion on privacy while providing only minimal help in the anti-terrorism effort.

The court said metadata can reveal considerable personal information such as whether a person is a victim of crime, or has "civil, political, or religious affiliations" and "whether and when he or she is involved in intimate relationships".

The New York appellate court stopped short of ruling on the constitutional issues of the bulk collection of phone metadata, but said the government went far beyond what congress intended in Section 215 of the Patriot Act, a law aimed at allowing authorities to thwart terrorism.