Shut down NSA collecting bulk phone call records

That's the conclusion of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent federal board. The board said that the program has provided only “minimal” benefits in counterterrorism efforts, is illegal and should be shut down. There was dissenting opinion from some members of the board.

Interestingly, the NSA bases its authority to collect on Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the F.B.I. to obtain business records deemed “relevant” to an investigation. The board's response to this conclusion by the NSA: the program “lacks a viable legal foundation under Section 215, implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments, raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value.” 

The report also scrutinizes in detail a handful of investigations in which the program was used, finding “no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack.”