Update:The court has just released video of the arguments: Jewel and Hepting.

Yesterday, EFF lawyers urged the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle to allow our two lawsuits challenging the National Security Agency's illegal mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans to continue. For those who couldn't attend in person, we have the next best thing: audio recordings of the oral arguments in both Jewel v. NSA (MP3, WMA, OGG) and Hepting v. AT&T (MP3, WMA, OGG).

There are also a couple of excellent news reports on the courtroom action: the Associated Press story contains a detailed run-down of the legal issues while Wired's account of the arguments -- in addition to providing lots of background on the history of the cases -- includes high quality photos from inside the courthouse in Seattle.

We can't predict when the appeals court will rule on our cases, but we hope it's soon. We've been fighting to obtain a ruling on the legality of the NSA's surveillance program for over half a decade, and are still stuck at the starting gate thanks to the government’s repeated claims of state secrecy and the unconstitutional "immunity" law that Congress passed for the telcos that have collaborated in the spying. Hopefully, the upcoming decisions in these cases will get us a step closer to finally imposing the rule of law on the NSA, and stopping the spying.