The National Security Agency collected tens of thousands of “wholly domestic” electronic communications and misled the federal court designed to provide oversight of its surveillance programs, according to a 2011 court opinion released Wednesday. In it, chief judge John D. Bates of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) repeatedly chastised the agency for “inaccurate” statements, misleading or incomplete filings and for having “circumvented the spirit” of laws protecting Americans’ privacy.

The opinion, previously classified, was released by the Justice Department after a 2-year Freedom of Information Act lawsuit battle initiated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Ultimately, the court ruled that changes to NSA procedures would bring the data surveillance program into compliance. But NSA critics now can point to a court opinion that repeatedly chastises the NSA and other federal agencies for over-reaching and skirting laws designed to balance the government’s need to investigate, bolstering their argument that oversight of NSA electronic surveillance is inadequate.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said release of the court ruling was “long overdue.”

“The very collection it describes was a serious violation of the 4 th Amendment and demonstrates even more clearly the need to close the back-door searches loophole that allows for the communications of Americans to be searched without a warrant,” Wyden said in a statement. “This ruling makes it clear that (the law permitting foreign electronic surveillance), as written, is insufficient to adequately protect the civil liberties and privacy rights of law-abiding Americans and should be reformed.”

Why All the Outrage?

NSA surveillance is supposed to be limited to foreigners when they are overseas, and the agency is supposed to employ rigorous “minimization procedures” to prevent even accidental copying and storage of the content of “wholly domestic” communications. In both the case before FISC and in conversations with reporters this week, federal officials describe the collection of Americans’ data as the result of technical glitches.

“This was not in any respect an intentional or wholesale breach of privacy of American persons,” Robert S. Litt III, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the Washington Post.

But Judge Bates didn’t see it that way.

“There is no question that the government is knowingly acquiring Internet transactions that contain wholly domestic communications. … By expanding its …acquisitions…NSA has, as a practical matter, circumvented the spirit (of the law),” Bates wrote.