[quote]A US federal judge has ruled that mass government surveillance of the phone network is legal, a week after another court said the opposite. New York District Judge William Pauley described the snooping as a "counter-punch" against al-Qaeda. He said the National Security Agency (NSA) programme might even have prevented the 9/11 attacks. Last week a Washington DC federal judge ruled the surveillance was "likely unconstitutional" and "Orwellian". But in Friday's decision, Judge Pauley, of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, said "the balance of equities and the public interest tilt firmly in favour of the Government's position". [/quote] [quote]he concluded: "The right to be free from searches and seizures is fundamental, but not absolute." He also noted: "Every day, people voluntarily surrender personal and seemingly-private information to trans-national corporations, which exploit that data for profit. "Few think twice about it, even though it is far more intrusive than bulk telephony metadata collection. "There is no evidence that the Government has used any of the bulk telephony metadata it collected for any purpose other than investigating and disrupting terrorist attacks." [/quote]