Top-secret court castigated NSA on surveillance
● A federal judge sharply rebuked the National Security Agency in 2011 for repeatedly misleading the court that oversees its surveillance on domestic soil, including a program that is collecting tens of thousands of domestic emails and other Internet communications of Americans each year, according to a secret ruling made public on Wednesday.
● The 85-page ruling by Judge John D. Bates, then serving as chief judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, involved an NSA program that searches the contents of Americans' international Internet communications without a warrant, in a hunt for discussions about foreigners who have been targeted for surveillance.
● The Justice Department had told Bates that NSA officials had discovered that the program had also been gathering domestic messages for three years. Bates found that the agency had violated the Constitution and declared the problems part of a pattern of misrepresentation by agency officials in submissions to the secret court.
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