Appeals court says NSA's phone surveillance illegal

WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court declared on Thursday that a National Security Agency program that sweeps up logs of Americans' phone calls is illegal, representing the most significant legal setback yet for the long-running surveillance operation.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York said the program "exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized" under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the USA Patriot Act, which the government had long maintained permitted that massive data collection.

"The statutes to which the government points have never been interpreted to authorize anything approaching the breadth of the sweeping surveillance at issue here," Judge Gerard Lynch wrote for the three-judge panel.