Courthouse News has two items of note this morning. Tim Ryan reports on Klayman following the D.C. Circuit Court’s reversal:
The federal judge who declared the bulk collection of cellphone data unconstitutional urged the government and its opponents to prepare for a quick trial on the matter after the case returned to his courtroom Wednesday.
Prompting the urgency from U.S. District Judge Richard Leon is the looming Nov. 29 deadline at which the USA Freedom Act takes effect, halting the National Security Agency’s data-collection program entirely.
“This court believes … that there are millions of Americans whose constitutional rights have been and are being violated,” Leon said during the hour-long hearing Wednesday.
For this reason, Leon said he would not tolerate any stalling from the government and advised Department of Justice attorney Rodney Patton not to plan any vacations or file any lengthy, time-consuming briefs.
“I am not going to sit by and let the government run the clock out between now and Nov. 29,” Leon told Patton in court.
Read more on Courthouse News.
Meanwhile, over in the Second Circuit, privacy advocates had a rough go. Adam Klasfeld reports:
A Second Circuit judge appeared hesitant to “throw some thunderbolts” zapping a 180-day transition period between the passage of the USA Freedom Act and the NSA’s deadline to stop vacuuming up telephone data.
The government must stop scooping up the telephone data of millions of U.S. citizens and others who have never been suspected of a crime on Nov. 29, when the new law comes into effect.
The American Civil Liberties Union, however, claims that every day the current program runs in the interim defies the Second Circuit’s ruling finding it illegal in May.
On Wednesday, all three Second Circuit judges presiding over the case seemed skeptical that there was any reason to intervene before the program elapses on its own in late fall.
Read more on Courthouse News.