US court says NSA can't hold phone records beyond five years

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has ruled against a U.S. government request that it be allowed to hold telephone metadata beyond the current five-year limit.

The U.S. government submitted a request in February to store the data, collected under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, for longer than five years. The government's argument was that it needed the records to fight off a number of civil lawsuits following the very first disclosure by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The FISC's Presiding Judge Reggie B. Walton ruled Friday that the proposed amended procedures would further infringe on the privacy interests of U.S. persons whose "telephone records were acquired in vast numbers and retained by the government for five years to aid in national security investigation." The judge concluded that any reason to keep the telephone records is outweighed by the damage that such a decision would do to privacy.

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