By Steven Nelson

U.S. News & World Report

February 13, 2016

Government attorneys moved in for the kill Friday, seeking to end the relative luck of legal activist Larry Klayman in his lawsuits against government surveillance.

The audience was smaller than at past hearings, perhaps because of the USA Freedom Act-ordered end to automatic bulk collection of domestic call records in November, but Klayman pressed ahead, urging U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to keep the fight alive.

Leon, fashionably late as usual, expressed no obvious leaning from the bench. The judge, who first ruled in late 2013 that the bulk call record collection likely violates the Fourth Amendment, noted that appeals court judges are considering his latest ruling against the program.