Stop The 2015 Patriot Act

A three judge panel of the second circuit court of appeals has ruled that the NSA/FBI dragnet metadata surveillance program violates the law. The Appeals Court ruled that the spying exceeds the authority granted by Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which is scheduled to expire on June 1.

The Second Circuit found that Section 215 does not 'authorize anything approaching the breadth of the sweeping surveillance at issue here.'"

Read the decision, and Judge Sack's concurrence, in which he compares Edward Snowden to Dan Ellsberg, writing that "Secretive bureaucratic agencies, like hermetically sealed houses, often benefit from a breath of fresh air."

The government’s argument about relevance, taken to its extreme, “would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans,” Judge Gerard Lynch wrote.

The court did not officially rule on whether the program is unconstitutional, because it ruled it illegal on a statutory basis. But, Lynch wrote: “The seriousness of the constitutional concerns, however, has some bearing on what we hold today, and on the consequences of that holding.”

When is the our government going to stop spying on Americans?