Court Nixes Feds Request to Keep NSA Phone Records Longer Than Five Years

Federal judge Reggie Walton

In a story that slipped under the radar during SXSW, the Ukraine crisis, and the Malaysian Airlines plane disaster, a federal judge ruled that the NSA could not keep phone records longer than five years. According to an article in theverge.com, the judge in charge of NSA oversight asserted that privacy protections trumped the government's contention that five years just wasn't enough time to hold gathered data for evidentiary purposes.

The ruling jurist, Reggie Walton, is a George W. Bush appointee. The judge has tended to see the merits of protecting individual privacy versus sweeping, secret government encroachment of it.