A striking reverse for the NSA Over the past six months, the sweeping surveillance powers of the US National Security Agency have been repeatedly criticised in the wake of the revelations by Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor. Few of those criticisms have been quite as damning as the one delivered this week by Richard Leon, a judge with the district court for the District of Columbia. In a case brought by two legal activists, Judge Leon was asked to determine whether the NSA's seven-year programme for the collection of Americans" phone data violated the US constitution. He said it "almost certainly" did. He described the NSA's power to engage in the systematic collection of phone data as something "almost Orwellian," a phenomenon that would have left James Madison, the author of the US constitution, "aghast." Among the more striking features of this broadside is that it comes from a judge appointed by George W Bush. The broad issue that Judge Leon looked at is the NSA's power to collect metadata - the record of who is telephoning whom, when the call is made and for how long. Defenders of the NSA argue that the acquisition of phone metadata only allows the agency to see the context in which a call is made, establishing links between potential terrorists. It does not give the NSA access to the content of calls. However, the specific point that troubles Judge Leon is the NSA's ability to collect Americans" phone records in bulk and keep them for five years. He argues that mobile phones and tablets now play such a huge role in Americans" lives that this mass collection of metadata is intrusive and open to abuse. The NSA, he says, receives a "daily, all-encompassing, indiscriminate dump" of data from the phones of millions of people with no possible link to terrorist activity. He notes, too, that the US government, in its evidence, did "not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA's bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack." Judge Leon has said the NSA can continue to operate this programme until an appeal is held six months from now. This gives the Obama administration time to make the case for metadata collection or accept that the NSA's operating rules must be reformed. One idea being proposed by some reformers is that the NSA should no longer collect and store metadata at all. Instead, the data should be stored by the phone company involved or by a third party organisation. Under this reform, the NSA would only gain access to the information it seeks by offering a much higher proof that it needs the information than is currently required. The NSA complains that such a reform would hamper the speed and effectiveness of its counter-terrorism effort. This merits serious discussion, especially if the agency is forced in future to track multiple databases rather than rely on its existing store of data The NSA has serious questions to answer. Time is running out for it to mount a robust defence of the status quo.