US judge rules against NSA surveillance methods The National Security Agency's surveillance methods have suffered a significant legal setback after a federal judge ruled on Monday that a programme that collects bulk phone records was likely to be unconstitutional. In an often scathing ruling about the activities of the NSA, the court said that the programme to collect the phone records of most Americans was based on "almost-Orwellian technology" and presented a clear breach of the Fourth Amendment protection against "unlawful search and seizure." Richard Leon, a judge with the district court for the District of Columbia, also said that the government had failed to demonstrate that the collection of phone records was an important tool for preventing terrorist plots. The legal case is based directly on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who has been granted asylum in Russia, and represents a clear victory for legal activists who have spent years trying to challenge the NSA. "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," Mr Leon wrote. I have little doubt that the author of our constitution, James Madison . . . [would] be aghast. Although Mr Leon said the programme was likely to be unconstitutional, he said that it could continue to operate until an appeal was held in around six months. The case could end up before the Supreme Court. Mr Snowden issued a statement welcoming the ruling. "A secret program authorised by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans" rights," he said. It is the first of many. The highly-critical ruling adds to the political dilemma facing the Obama administration as it weighs substantial reforms to its surveillance programmes to try and re-establish public confidence. The president is due to meet senior technology executives on Tuesday, including the chief executives of Apple, Twitter and Yahoo, to discuss the NSA and the error-ridden HealthCare.gov website. Several of the companies issued a public letter earlier this month calling for substantial reforms of electronic surveillance. An external review panel has suggested changes to the phone data programme, which began under President George W Bush, but intelligence officials have lobbied hard to block major reforms to NSA activities. Under the programme, the NSA collects the records of most calls in the US for five years and searches for connections to known terrorism suspects. The ruling stems from a lawsuit brought by Larry Klayman, a conservative legal activist. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court dismissed a similar case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not prove the government was collecting their telephone data. However, Mr Leon ruled that the case now had legal standing because of a secret court order leaked in June by Mr Snowden which required Verizon to hand over the records of its customers" calls. According to the ruling, Teresa Shea, the NSA's director of signals intelligence, told the court that if the phone records programme had been in operation before 9/11, the government would have discovered that one of the hijackers had called a known al-Qaeda safe house in Yemen. However, in his ruling the judge concluded that "the government does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA's bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack." The administration's defence has rested on a 1979 Supreme Court ruling that telephone bills were not covered by Fourth Amendment protections. However, Mr Leon said that customers now had a very different relationship with their telephones than they did 43 years ago and did not expect phone companies to be in a "joint intelligence-gathering operation with the government." An NSA official told CBS on Sunday that there had been discussion about offering Mr Snowden amnesty because of the potentially damaging documents he still had in his possession. However, White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Monday that the administration was still looking to press felony charges against Mr Snowden. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democratic senator who has been sharply critical of the NSA, said: "Protecting the country from terrorism is obviously vitally important but the government can do this without collecting the phone records of massive numbers of law-abiding men, women and children."