December 20, 2013 2:37PM # You Could Have Read It Here First By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE If you’ve been [reading](https://www.cato.org/blog/unpersuasive-case-nsa-call-dragnets-effectiveness) [Cato at Liberty](https://www.cato.org/blog/you-think-smith-v-maryland-permits-mass-surveillance-you-havent-read-smith-v-maryland) and [www​.cato​.org](https://www.cato.org/nsa-abuses), then you already know, as the lead story in the [*Washington Post* reported](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/officials-defenses-of-nsa-phone-program-may-be-unraveling/2013/12/19/6927d8a2-68d3-11e3-ae56-22de072140a2_story.html) this morning, that both the constitutionality and the necessity of the NSA’s massive surveillance are in doubt: > From the moment the government’s massive database of citizens’ call records was exposed this year, U.S. officials have clung to two main lines of defense: The secret surveillance program was constitutional and critical to keeping the nation safe. > > > But six months into the controversy triggered by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the viability of those claims is no longer clear. > > > In a three-day span, those rationales were upended by a [federal judge who declared that the program was probably unconstitutional](http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/judge-nsas-collecting-of-phone-records-is-likely-unconstitutional/2013/12/16/6e098eda-6688-11e3-a0b9-249bbb34602c_story.html) and the [release of a report by a White House panel utterly unconvinced that stockpiling such data had played any meaningful role in preventing terrorist attacks](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-shouldnt-keep-phone-database-review-board-recommends/2013/12/18/f44fe7c0-67fd-11e3-a0b9-249bbb34602c_story.html). ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Technology and Privacy](https://www.cato.org/technology-privacy), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).