Surveillance court rejected Verizon challenge to NSA calls program

Verizon in January filed a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s program that collects billions of Americans’ call-detail records, but a surveillance court rejected it, according to newly declassified documents and individuals with knowledge of the matter. In denying the phone company’s petition in March, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge Rosemary M. Collyer embraced the arguments put forth by the government that the program is constitutional in light of a Supreme Court decision in 1979 that Americans have no expectation of privacy in dialing phone numbers. Until January, no company had filed a legal challenge to the program, the judge said. But the documents make clear the filing came as a result of a December ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon in Washington that the NSA program likely was unconstitutional.