NSA privacy questions bound for SCOTUS

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling against the National Security Agency’s sweeping phone records collection program raised constitutional questions likely to be answered by the Supreme Court.

“Given the amount of metadata that Americans create every day ... I think it’s very likely that the status of the third-party doctrine ends up before the Supreme Court again sometime soon, whether through one of these cases or another,” said Patrick Toomey, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the case against the government. “The world today involves the creation of so much metadata, and the government’s appetite to get its hands on that data has proven so limitless, that I think the courts -- as the Second Circuit previewed -- will have to grapple with it,” he added.