Judge: Challenge to NSA should proceed

WASHINGTON - A judge said Wednesday he plans to push ahead with a challenge to the National Security Agency's bulk collection of telephone data on hundreds of millions of Americans, even as the program is set to expire at the end of November.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said he had no intention of allowing the Obama administration to use legal maneuvering to "run out the clock" on a lawsuit challenging the USA Patriot Act. Leon ruled in 2013 that the mass collection of phone records is likely unconstitutional, but the government successfully appealed that decision by challenging whether the plaintiffs in the case could prove their phone records were among those swept up by the secret program.

The suit was filed by lawyer Larry Klayman and Charles Strange, father of a cryptologist technician killed in 2011 when his helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan. Both are customers of Verizon Wireless, but Klayman could only prove in court that the NSA had collected records from a related company, Verizon Business Network Services.

An appeals court last week reversed Leon's earlier ruling, sending the case back to the lower court to determine whether the government must divulge whether Klayman's cell records had really been collected.