Three appeals court judges heard arguments Tuesday from civil liberties advocates and a Justice Department attorney about the legality of the National Security Agency’s dragnet collection of U.S. phone records.

The judges, all Republican appointees, asked pointed questions of the attorneys, at times hectoring them for specific details and case law citations as they considered U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s preliminary injunction – stayed pending appeal – against the collection.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit judges showed little deference to Leon’s ruling, the first and thus far only decision against the NSA program. Leon ruled in December the “almost Orwellian” program “almost certainly” violates the Fourth Amendment.

Justice Department attorney Thomas Byron told the judges the program is an “important government intelligence program” and said Leon erred in finding conservative legal activist Larry Klayman and his clients have standing to challenge it.

The program was revealed in June 2013 by exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden, who leaked to the press a secret court order forcing Verizon Business Network Services to hand over its customers’ call records for a 90-day period. The order was confirmed as authentic by the government.

Despite confirmation from officials that similar orders are issued to other major phone companies, Byron said “there is no evidence in the record or the public domain,” that Klayman and his clients, Verizon Wireless customers, had their records seized.

Later in the hearing, Byron boasted of the Obama administration’s transparency, saying “the government has disclosed far more in this case” than was required.

Byron also argued Leon was wrong to find the program unconstitutional. He pointed to the landmark 1979 Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Maryland, which found a criminal suspect did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy over a record of outgoing calls during a two-day period, as he had voluntarily shared the information with his phone company.

In his December ruling Leon wrote the facts of the Smith case and the NSA program "have so many significant distinctions between them that I cannot possibly navigate these uncharted Fourth Amendment waters using as my North Star a case that predates the rise of cellphones.”

Klayman and Cindy Cohn, supporting Klayman's position on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, urged the judges to, like Leon, look toward more recent Supreme Court privacy decisions, such as those requiring warrants to track a person’s public movements with GPS or to access an arrested person’s cellphone.

Cohn responded to claims the government does not misuse its phone record database by quoting Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ ruling in Riley v. California, in which he wrote that warrants are generally necessary to search arrestees’ cellphones, as “the Founders did not fight a revolution to gain the right to government agency protocols” to protect rights.

Byron conceded to the judges the NSA’s record collection was broader than records collected in the Smith case, which only included outgoing calls, but insisted it remains the relevant precedent.

Cohn, however, said that unlike the outgoing calls records in the Smith case, incoming call are listed in the NSA’s database, information not voluntarily divulged by call recipients to phone companies. The massive scope of the collection is another significant distinction, she said.

The hearing featured several testy exchanges.

At one point Judge Stephen Williams swatted at suggestions the program is ineffective at preventing terrorist attacks – for which he said there was no evidence, despite two executive branch panels finding that to be the case.

In a particularly tense exchange, Judges Williams and David Sentelle insisted that Klayman offer evidence to support his claim the NSA program includes collection of location data along with other phone call metadata.

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“We’re asking you now, you tell us now,” Sentelle growled, forcing Klayman to thumb through an expert’s affidavit to find a quote explaining trunk identifiers, information collected by the NSA program that indicates the general location of a caller.

The judges' leanings on the case were difficult to detect. Each judge sounded at times skeptical of surveillance foes' arguments and at other times open-minded about striking down the NSA program.

Judge Williams, for example, pondered whether the five-year retention of the records was legally significant, but also compared the phone record dragnet to drunken driving checkpoints, where people are stopped regardless of individualized suspicion.

Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, pushed back on the DUI checkpoint analogy, saying such stops have at least some limits, such as occurring at targeted locations.

Judge Janice Rogers Brown appeared hesitant to overturn the Smith precedent, worrying aloud about how that would affect police work, but added, “I understand this is a brave new world and that the aggregation of this data is unlike anything we’ve seen before.”

Attorney Paul Smith, representing the Center for National Security Studies, argued the court could avoid issuing a constitutional judgment and instead rule the program was not authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which the government secretly persuaded Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges authorizes the program.

Judges Williams and Sentelle expressed uncertainty on whether they could follow Smith’s advice, as Klayman dropped the statutory argument on appeal.

The hearing attracted attorneys from other NSA cases, including former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, representing Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and FreedomWorks in a case against the program yet to be heard in federal court, and ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer, who’s spearheaded a case heard on appeal in September by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

A third lawsuit against the program is on appeal, brought by Idaho nurse Anna Smith and supported by the ACLU and the EFF. It will be heard Dec. 8 by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Cuccinelli said after the hearing he found arguments on standing an phone location data informative. Cohn declined to predict an outcome, but said the judges were fair.

Klayman held a news conference outside the courthouse, declaring his belief the judges were merely playing devil’s advocate with their tough questioning and that “our chances are excellent.”

Klayman, who is also attempting to have Obama deported, told reporters a second American Revolution is possible if judges don’t act against the NSA program.

“Unless this court along with the Supreme Court rules in our favor we may have to fight another one,” he said.