The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court shot down the...
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court shot down the federal government’s attempt to hold phone records for longer than five years. It did so in an opinion dated Friday and signed by FISC Judge Reggie Walton. The federal government had requested…
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to hold the records longer in an amendment to the minimization procedures. But “the amended procedures would further infringe on the privacy interests” of U.S. citizens, Walton said, pointing out that most people whose phone metadata is collected in bulk by the government never had been subject to investigation. The government had indicated it wanted to keep the metadata due to certain civil cases it was involved in, but it did not provide many details. The purported need for the metadata is totally unrelated to foreign intelligence needs, Walton observed. He also criticized how this metadata could be “improperly used or disseminated” if kept longer.