WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency program that collected telephone call information on billions of calls is illegal, the 2nd…

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency program that collected telephone call information on billions of calls is illegal, the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled.

The federal appeals court said the law Congress passed to allow information relevant to terrorism investigations to be collected does not authorize the “bulk collection” of phone records on the scale of the NSA program, POLITICO reports.

The three-judge panel did not address whether the NSA program violated the Constitution.