Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) on Tuesday defended the National Security Agency’s telephone metadata collection in the wake of a federal judge’s ruling that the agency’s program is likely violating the Constitution.
“Only the Supreme Court can resolve the question on the constitutionality of the NSA’s program,” Feinstein said in a statement. “I welcome a Supreme Court review since it has been more than 30 years since the court’s original decision of constitutionality, and I believe it is crucial to settling the issue once and for all. In the meantime, the call records program remains in effect.”
Feinstein said U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon’s ruling stood in contrast to the opinions of at least 15 other federal district judges who reauthorized the NSA’s phone records collection program a total of 35 times while serving on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act review court. She also pointed to a decision handed down last month in U.S. District Court in Southern California that found the records collection program to be constitutional, calling those precedents “compelling.”
