The ACLU plans to appeal the ruling, the ACLU says. Judge William Pauley III ruled that the NSA’s bulk phone record metadata collection efforts are legal. The ACLU says the decision misapplies a narrow and outdated precedent to read away core constitutional protections. The metadata collection serves as the U.S. government’s “counter-punch,” Pauley wrote. The program represents “the natural tension between protecting the nation and preserving civil liberty,” he wrote. It also allows the NSA to “detect relationship so attenuated and ephemeral they would otherwise escape notice””]