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declination 16 (Reuters) - The U.S. brasss gathering of Americans phone records is likely unlawful, a judge govern on Monday, raising grievous doubts about the value of the National protective covering Agencys so-called metadata counterterrorism program.I cannot imagine a more indiscriminate and arbitrary invasion than this systematic and sophisticated collection and retention of personal data on virtually each single citizen, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, appointed by Republican chair George W. Bush in 2002, wrote in a 68-page ruling.The U.S. Department of Justice verbalise it was reviewing the ruling in a part brought by Larry Klayman, a button-down lawyer, and Charles Strange, described in romance documents as the father of a cryptanalyst technician for the NSA who was killed in Afghanistan in 2011. The judge ordered the government to stop compile data about the two plaintiffs, who were Verizon Communications Inc customers. Verizon declined comment.We believe the p rogram is constitutional as previous judges have found, Department of Justice spokesman Andrew Ames state in a statement.Leon suspended enforcement of his injunction against the program in light up of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues pending an expected appeal by the government. A U.S. official said an appeal was likely.Leon expressed skepticism of the programs value, writing that the government could not cite a single instance in which the mickle data actually stopped an imminent attack.I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a substance of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism, he wrote.That ... ...Glenn Greenwald, a former columnist for The shielder who wrote about the metadata collection program based on documents leaked to him by Snowden, praised the court ruling.This is a huge vindication for Edward Snowd en and our reporting. Snowden came forward precisely because he knew that the NSA was in secret violating the constitutional rights of his fellow citizens, and a federal court ruled like a shot that this is exactly what has been happening, Greenwald said in an email.A committee of experts appointed by the Obama Administration to review NSA activities is expected to recommend that the spy agency cave in up collection of masses of metadata and instead require telephone companies to stockpile onto it so it can be searched. But intelligence officials and the phone companies themselves are said to oppose such a plan. found in nature, for interpreter peptide nucleic acids.