Phone Tracking Program News Today

Thank you very much for coming in during the holidays. >> thank you. >> a major decision today on the governments collection of our personal data. a federal judge in new york has ruled that the nsas phone tracking program is legal, and he dismissed the lawsuit from the american civil liberties union. the judge said theres no evidence that the government used any of the information its collected for any other reason than investigating potential terror attacks. doug has more on this. he is traving...

Jonathan hunt is live. >> reporter: we heard two side of what is a mallty facetted debate. lawyers for the aclu in court asked that -- said the phone tracking program that tracks the calls, hundreds of millions of them, on american citizens and foreign citizens, amounts to what the aclu called the largest surveillance operation ever conducted by a democratic government against its own people, and they said it violates both the first and fourth amendment of the constitution. i spoke to aclu membe...

Few fish but thats what its down here. >> reporter: what the aclu wants is an injunction to immediately stop the phone-tracking program. they did not get it today. no decision from the judge, and no indication when that decision will come. >> whats the governments response to all this? >> well, the government says that they are not collecting actual data from these calls. the content of the calls. they say they dont actually listen to the find -- phone calls. they dont actually record the conver...

Numbers tracked only 2,000 were properly vetted. the sefrps went on for three years until they were uncovered back in 2009. part of the problem was no one at the nsa understood how the phone tracking program worked. not sure i buy that excuse. but its an interesting one. >> if you enjoyed the weather around the last couple days dont get used to it. hot temperatures on the way. >> maria molina is here with the first degree weather update. >> we are talking extreme heat. it naturally reaches dan...

Oregon, they havent changed position. theyve demanded an open debate and they want changes. but there has been a shift in the congress, shift from monday to friday. you saw senator feinstein, the chairman of the senate intelligence committee a week ago, very defensive, said flat out the programs fine. by the end of the week she was saying she may be proposing some changes to the way the court and the oversight works. i do think congress may move incrementally, if at all, but may move toward some...

Reporter with "the guardian" the newspaper that broke the story said on monday he will not be the one to reveal his sources location. >> i know where he is generally. im not going to talk about where he is either in general or specifically. hes a source and im not going to disclose information about his whereabouts. hes perfectly capable of doing that himself if he wants to. >> reporter: snowden sparked suspicion before he revealed himself. investigators visited his honolulu home asking about hi...

Im not going to talk about where he is in general or specifically. hes a source and im not going to disclose information about his whereabouts. hes perfectly capable of doing that himself if he wants to. >> reporter: and signs snowden sparked suspicion before he revealed himself, investigators visited his honolulu home asking about his long disappearance from work but they were too late. he and his girlfriend had cleared out. new national survey conducted by the pew research center shows a major...

Secret clearances. one third of them private contractors. still, new polling shows the american people are generally in favor of the clandestine programs. according to a "washington post"/pew poll, 62% favor investigating threats at the expense of privacy and 56% say the nsas phone tracking program is acceptable. but more than half of those surveyed believe the government should not monitor e-mail to prevent terror attacks. eugene robinson, you wrote about this in your latest piece. i want to re...

Treason, quote, its pretty dam close. snowdens whereabouts are unclear and he may have left hong kong where he had been staying in a hotel for weeks. lawmakers and federal officials want to know how a private contractor with limited experience and an apparent lack of formal education had access to such sensitive material. its shining a spotlight on the governments use of outside companies to deal with national secrets. 1.4 million people hold top secret clarntss, one third private contractors. n...

Theres a reason why these programs are classified. i think there is a suggestion that somehow any classified program is a, quote, unquote, secret program, which means its somehow suspicious, but the fact of the matter is in our modern history there are a whole range of programs that have been classified. >> remember the nsas phone tracking program had been going on for several years and congress knew about it. its not the biggest, just the latest leak to hamstring the obama administration. the w...