It has finally happened: a nonsecret federal court in Washington has asked whether it violates your privacy for the National Security Agency to intercept all (yes, all) phone calls in the United States and record the metadata connected to them. And what do you know? The court, in a case called Klayman v. Obama, concluded that it probably did. Then it ordered the government to stop. Hallelujah!
The district court's order of a preliminary injunction could well be overturned. The Barack Obama administration will almost certainly appeal, claiming that national security is impinged, not to mention that no individual has standing to sue.
But the decision, however fleeting it turns out to be, provides a perfect opportunity to ask just what we've learned about secrecy and government in this year of Edward Snowden. The court's decision concentrates the mind on an obvious fact that we have a tendency to forget when debating whether the superleaker was a traitor, a hero or both: In any rational constitutional world, the public and the courts alike would not have allowed the domestic spying that the National Security Agency has been systematically performing.
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