Leon granted an injunction that would have stopped national security officials from collecting telephone record data on two of the plaintiffs. (The challengers have not certified a class to date.) However, the judge put that order on hold pending the government’s likely appeal. 
 
 Describing the government's surveillance efforts as "almost-Orwellian," U.S. District Judge Richard Leon found the challengers in a lawsuit in Washington were likely to succeed on their Fourth Amendment privacy claims. 
 
 The National Security Agency's bulk collection of telephone records likely violates privacy rights of individual Americans, a federal trial judge in Washington ruled today. 
 
 The judge said he had "serious doubts" about the effectiveness of the telephone record collection program in aiding time-sensitive terrorism investigations. As a result, he said, the plaintiffs showed their privacy interests likely outweighed the government's stated interests in gathering the data. 
 
 "Indeed, I have little doubt that the author of our Constitution, James Madison, who cautioned us to beware 'the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power,' would be aghast," Leon wrote. 
 
 Attorney and activist Larry Klayman filed several lawsuits challenging government surveillance efforts following leaks earlier this year by ex-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Klayman and his co-plaintiffs sued as subscribers of telecommunications companies that were reportedly the subject of NSA intelligence-gathering efforts. 
 
 The plaintiffs accused the government of violating their constitutional rights and exceeding its authority under the Administrative Procedure Act. Leon found the court lacked standing to consider the APA claim, but could consider the constitutional claims. 
 
 The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court reviews warrants for government surveillance, but Leon said that didn't stop him from having jurisdiction to hear constitutional claims related to that surveillance. 
 
 "While Congress has great latitude to create statutory schemes like [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act], it may not hang a cloak of secrecy over the Constitution," Leon wrote. 
 
 Although the plaintiffs brought a number of constitutional claims involving the collection of phone record metadata, Leon said they were most likely to succeed on a Fourth Amendment claim. 
 
 For more than seven years, Leon noted, the government had collected telephone records that revealed information on what phone numbers made and received calls, when the calls took place and how long the calls lasted. The government said the metadata records were used to identify connections to terrorists and didn’t include information on who made the calls or what they discussed. 
 
 Leon dismissed the government’s argument the 1979 Supreme Court case Smith v. Maryland—which involved the warrantless use of a “pen register”—permitted the bulk collection of telephone metadata. (The authorities use pen registers to record the numbers a person dials.) 
 
 “When do present-day circumstances—the evolution of the government’s surveillance capabilities, citizens’ phone habits, and the relationship between the NSA and telecom companies—become so thoroughly unlike those considered by the Supreme Court thirty-four years ago that a precedent like Smith does not apply?” Leon wrote. “The answer, unfortunately for the government, is now.” 
 
 The judge said he was “convinced that the surveillance program now before me is so different from a simple pen register that Smith is of little value in assessing whether the Bulk Telephony Metadata Program constitutes a Fourth Amendment search.” 
 
 “To the contrary,” Leon wrote, “I believe that the bulk telephony metadata collection and analysis almost certainly does violate a reasonable expectation of privacy.” 
 
 Leon said “the almost-Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States is unlike anything that could have been conceived in 1979.” 
 
 The judge added that the amount of information contained in phone records today was greater as well. He said he could no longer use "as my North Star a case that predates the rise of cell phones." 
 
 Although Leon granted the injunction, he stayed that order pending the government's appeal "in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues." 
 
 Klayman could not immediately be reached for comment. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, Andrew Ames, said the government is reviewing the court's decision. 
 
 "We believe the program is constitutional as previous judges have found," he said. "We have no further comment at this time.” 
 
 U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D) said in a statement today that in light of Leon's ruling, "it is clear to me that even more oversight is needed in the future." 
 
 "Americans deserve an open and transparent debate about the constitutionality, efficacy, and appropriateness of the government’s dragnet collection programs," Leahy said. "I welcome today’s district court ruling regarding the collection of phone metadata, particularly because the litigants were afforded the opportunity to participate in an adversarial process." 
 
 Updated at 3:59 p.m. Mike Scarcella contributed to this report. National Law Journal photo by Diego M. Radzinschi. ||||| A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency program which collects information on nearly all telephone calls made to, from or within the United States is likely unconstitutional. 
 
 U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. He also said the Justice Department had failed to demonstrate that collecting the information had helped to head off terrorist attacks. 
 
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 reset Feinstein, Chambliss defend NSA Politicians sound off on Snowden 
 
 Acting on a lawsuit brought by conservative legal activist Larry Klayman, Leon issued a preliminary injunction barring the NSA from collecting so-called metadata pertaining to the Verizon accounts of Klayman and one of his clients. However, the judge stayed the order to allow for an appeal. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: NSA probe: Snowden can still do damage) 
 
 “I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval,” wrote Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush. 
 
 The preliminary injunction Leon granted Monday does not require him to make a definitive ruling on the constitutional questions in the case, but does take account of which side he believes is more likely to prevail. 
 
 Leon’s 68-page opinion is the first significant legal setback for the NSA’s surveillance program since it was disclosed in June in news stories based on leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. For seven years, the metadata program has been approved repeatedly by numerous judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and found constitutional by at least one judge sitting in a criminal case. 
 
 (WATCH: Boehner says Edward Snowden is a ‘traitor’) 
 
 The Justice Department persuaded those courts that the collection of information on the time and length of calls, as well as the numbers called, did not amount to a search under the Fourth Amendment because that information is routinely available to telephone companies for billing purposes and is shared with those firms voluntarily. 
 
 Government lawyers and the judges who found the NSA program legal pointed to a 1979 Supreme Court ruling, Smith v. Maryland, which found no search warrant was needed by police to install a device which recorded the numbers dialed on a particular phone line. 
 
 But Leon said the three-decade-old precedent was not applicable to a program like the NSA’s because of its sophistication and because telephone use has become far more intense in recent years. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Military keeps cyber control at NSA) 
 
 “The ubiquity of phones has dramatically altered the quantity of information that is now available and, more importantly, what that information can tell the Government about people’s lives,” the judge wrote. “I cannot possibly navigate these uncharted Fourth Amendment waters using as my North Star a case that predates the rise of cell phones.” 
 
 The judge went on to conclude that the searches involved in the NSA metadata program were likely not permissible under the Fourth Amendment in part because there was little evidence the program has actually prevented terrorism. 
 
 “I have significant doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism,” Leon wrote. “The government does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the Government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature.” 
 
 Edward Snowden himself praised the decision.“I acted on my belief that the NSA’s mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts. Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans’ rights. It is the first of many.” 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: W.H. declines to split NSA, Cyber Command) 
 
 The judge’s ruling was issued just before White House press secretary Jay Carney took the podium for the daily press briefing. Carney said he was unaware of the decision and he referred inquiries to the Justice Department. 
 
 “We are reviewing the court’s decision,” DOJ spokesman Andrew Ames said. 
 
 Similar lawsuits challenging the program are pending in at least three other federal courts around the country. In addition, criminal defendants are beginning to challenge the program after the Justice Department disclosed it had played a role in investigating their cases. 
 
 Critics of the NSA program leapt on Leon’s decision as evidence that the legal foundation of the surveillance effort is deeply flawed. 
 
 “The ruling underscores what I have argued for years: The bulk collection of Americans’ phone records conflicts with Americans’ privacy rights under the U.S. Constitution and has failed to make us safer,” Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) said in a statement urging passage of legislation ending the so-called bulk collection program. “We can protect our national security without trampling our constitutional liberties,” he added. 
 
 At a hearing last month, Leon said he knew that his decision would be far from the last word on the issue, which is almost certain to wind up at the Supreme Court. 
 
 However, he added some flair to his opinion Monday, referring at one point to the Beatles and at another to Federalist Papers author James Madison, who later became president. 
 
 “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. Indeed, I have little doubt that the author of our Constitution, James Madison, who cautioned us to beware ‘the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power’ would be aghast,” the judge wrote. 
 
 Follow @politico ||||| WASHINGTON—A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency's collection of phone records "almost certainly" violates the Constitution, setting up a larger legal battle over long-secret counterterrorism programs. 
 
 U.S. District Judge Richard Leon's sharply worded opinion labeled as "almost Orwellian" the NSA's bulk phone-surveillance program, one of several shots the judge took at the spying and its...
– The NSA's massive collection of phone metadata is "almost certainly" unconstitutional, a federal judge declared in a blistering statement today. Judge Richard Leon issued an injunction banning the agency from spying on the plaintiffs in the lawsuit he was reviewing—legal analyst Larry Klayman and one of his clients—though he suspended that injunction to allow the government to appeal, Politico and the Wall Street Journal report. Leon called the program "almost Orwellian," writing, "I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary invasion'" of privacy. "I have little doubt that the author of our Constitution, James Madison, who cautioned us to beware 'the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power,' would be aghast," he added, according to the Blog of the Legal Times.