On November 9, 2015, the D.C. District Court filed an order barring the US government from collecting, as part of the NSA’s Bulk Telephony Metadata Program, any metadata associated with a California lawyer and his law firm. Klayman v. Obama.
However, on November 10, 2015, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered that the District Court’s order be stayed pending further order of the court. The purpose of the stay is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the merits of the government’s emergency motion for a stay. According to the government, it would take months to stop the collection of a specific subject’s phone metadata. Meanwhile, the enactment of the USA Freedom Act will stop bulk metadata collection in less than three weeks and the government will transition to a new intelligence collection program based on targeted collection.
Appellees are due to file a response.
Order dated November 9, 2015, in Klayman v. Obama is available at https://www.eff.org…
Government’s Emergency Stay Motion is available at https://www.eff.org…
More information on ACLU v. Clapper and the USA Freedom Act is available at http://www.technethics.com…