Three prominent U.S. senators have in a federal court filing questioned the claim of the National Security Agency that its bulk collection of phone records is required for intelligence purposes.
The brief argues that after extensive review of the surveillance, the senators have seen no evidence that the bulk collection has provided any "intelligence of value" that could not have been arrived at through less intrusive methods.
Mark Udall, a Democrat from Colorado, Ron Wyden, Democrat senator from Oregon and Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat, all members of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said Tuesday they filed an amici curiae (friends-of-the-court) brief in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco division.
In the First Unitarian Church v. National Security Agency suit in the court, the church and other organizations claim that the bulk phone records collection program has violated their constitutional rights including to free association.
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