Judge denies government’s bid to delay lawsuit to halt NSA metadata collection

Cyrus Farivar reports:

A federal judge has denied the government’s request to delay what could turn out to be a major landmark case (ACLU v. Clapper) on the legality of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass metadata collection program. In a complaint filed last month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked a judge to declare Verizon’s ongoing metadata collection and sharing to the NSA unconstitutional.

At a hearing in a New York federal district courtroom Thursday, Judge William Pauley dismissed the Obama Administration’s request to push back a hearing date so that the government could have more time to search through its trove of classified material to determine what could be disclosed.

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