A United States appeals court has termed the collection of phone records by the National Security Agency (NSA) illegal.
While overturning a 2013 verdict, the judges stopped short of scrapping the programme. They instead, urged Congress to take action, reported the BBC.
The details of NSA surveillance programmes were leaked by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor who has since fled to Russia.
The NSA collected details about numbers called and the number of times but not the content of conversations. It also allegedly monitored European firms. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was one of the many individuals targeted by the agency.
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