White House: wiretap NSA was legal

The White House supports the decision of the appellate court, which decided that the tapping of telephone lines by the US National Security Agency was legal.

As the court ruled, activist Larry Kleiman, whose demand to suspend the program was satisfied by a lower court in 2013, failed to prove that his phone was tapped.

The verdict overturns the decision taken by the District Court of the District of Columbia, which in 2013 year ruled that the agency’s program to collect metadata [information about who called and when, but not the content of the conversation] from telephone lines is illegal, most likely unconstitutional, and should be suspended.

Since this verdict was passed, the United States has passed laws shifting responsibility for the safety of metadata to telephone companies. Now, in order to gain access to such data, the authorities will need a warrant.

In 2014, the US Commission for the Supervision of Privacy and Civil Liberties also decided that the collection of NSA data was illegal. According to representatives of the commission established by the US Congress, the existence of such programs is unacceptable.

Prior to this, President Barack Obama said that US intelligence services should continue to intercept the metadata of telephone conversations.

As previously reported, the US Court of Appeal found illegal the collection of telephone conversations by the National Security Agency illegal collection.

The US Federal Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision of 2013 of the year, according to which the storage of these data was recognized as conforming to the constitution.