A United States judge says that the National Security Agency’s (NSA) once-secret programs to gather up and analyze every bit of telephone and internet data that it can is unconstitutional.  The massive data mining was revealed in the documents smuggled out of the US by whistleblower Edward Snowden and leaked to a tight circle of journalists.

In the 68 page ruling, US Federal Judge Judge Richard Leon wrote:

“I cannot imagine a more “indiscriminate” and “arbitrary invasion” than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval.  Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.”

Leon says he’s seen no evidence that the metadata being gobbled up and stored in the NSA vast databanks has been used to bust up any actual terrorist plots. 

Judge Leon’s preliminary ruling favors five plaintiffs who challenged the practice as a violation of privacy rights.  The judge is not ordering enforcement of the ruling, in expectation of an appeal from the government.

“Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights. It is the first of many,” said Snowden on the lam in Russia, in a statement released to journalist Glenn Greenwald, who spoke on America’s MSNBC network.