NSA metadata program “consistent” with Fourth Amendment, Kavanaugh once argued

Enlarge / Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the third day of his Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill September 6, 2018 in Washington, DC. (credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

On Friday, during the final day of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) had an interesting exchange over recent privacy cases with the Supreme Court judicial nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

"I've talked repeatedly in this hearing about how technology will be one of the huge issues with the Fourth Amendment going forward," said Kavanaugh, who serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Opening their six-minute tite-i-tite, Leahy began by asking the appellate court judge about what Kavanaugh wrote in November 2015 in a case known as Klayman v. Obama. In that case, a well-known conservative activist attorney, Larry Klayman, sued the then-president on June 7, 2013-the day after the Snowden revelations became public. The complaint argued that the National Security Agency's telephone metadata program ("Section 215"), which gathered records of all incoming and outgoing calls for years on end, was unconstitutional.

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