Judge Richard Leon, a judge in the DC district court, has ruled that the NSA's bulk metadata collection should be stopped as violating the 4th Amendment

For the past six months I've been told that everybody knew that this sort of mass metadata surveillance was going on and that if you had paid attention to the policy debates over FISA for the past few years you would be aware that these programs exist and that they are legal and they are constitutional, and sometimes that Bush might have done something illegal but when Obama did it it was legal.

I've honestly been concerned that a tendency by our Congress to legislate after the fact in this area, as they did with the retroactive telecom immunity, coupled with a proactive PR campaign by the NSA which includes fictional TV shows as well as "news" programs, and a bunch of bad rationalizations and wishful thinking on the part of people who just don't want to deal with the realities of this controversy would add up to a situation where these people could go along telling themselves that its all legal and its always been legal and everyone has always known that it was legal, the way that we've always been at war with eastasia.

Judge Leon's decision puts a stop to all that nonsense. Now all of these people are going to have to take the controversy seriously. Now, it gets interesting.

Judge Says NSA Bulk Metadata Collection Unconstitutional, Issues Injunction | Techdirt