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FISA court renews NSA phone data collection

The U.S. government's collection of domestic phone call information is lawful, according to a top-secret intelligence court. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled on Friday that the government can continue collecting phone metadata, which includes numbers dialed and the time and duration of calls.

The court agreed with the Obama administration and a New York federal court in finding the National Security Agency's phone data collection lawful. However, the court stipulated that the content of calls cannot be gathered.  

The program must be renewed every 90 days and has already been approved more than 36 times over the past seven years, or when the collection first began.

Although the court usually keeps its rulings secret, it issued a press release detailing this recent decision.

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