Flutterby™! : Even the FISC was bothered by NSA overreach

October 3, 2011 FISC Opinion Holding NSA Surveillance Unconstitutional. Footnote 14 reads:

The Court is troubled that the government's revelations regarding the NSA's acquisition of Internet transactions mark the third instance in less than three years in which the government has disclosed a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program.

In March, 2009, the Court concluded that its authorization of NSA's bulk acquisition of telephone call detail records from [REDACTED] in the so called "big business records" matter "ha[d] been premised on a flawed depiction of how the NSA uses [the acquired] metadata," and that "[t]his misperception by the FISC existed from the inception of its authorized collection in May 2006, buttressed by the repeated inaccurate statements made in the government's submissions, and despite a government-devised and Court-mandated oversight regime." Docket [REDACTED] Contrary to the government's repeated assurances, the NSA had been routinely running queries of the metadata using querying terms that did not meet the required standard for querying. The court concluded that this requirement had been "so frequently and systemically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall ... regime has never functioned effectively."

(Hat tip to Trevor Timm for calling that out)