In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans' telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional.

Snowden fled the United States and was given asylum in Russia after he leaked a trove of secret files in 2013 to news organizations that revealed vast domestic and international surveillance operations carried out by the NSA.

The group offered shelter and other help for a few weeks to Snowden in 2013, who is wanted in the United States for leaking classified documents from the National Security Agency that exposed the scope of massive American government surveillance operations.

The book, "Permanent Record," is scheduled to be released Tuesday.

Vanessa Rodel, who helped shelter Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, has settled in Montreal.

Learn more about the fatal infection that killed a Montreal woman, meet the family who helped Edward Snowden and hear more about Côte Saint-Luc's Smart Cities Challenge proposal.

Vanessa Rodel said she hopes that Canada will also welcome the other people who helped shelter the American whistleblower.

"I feel so great and I feel like I'm free," she said after arriving at Toronto's Pearson International Airport.

One of seven people who helped shelter former CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden when he fled to Hong Kong is in failing health and needs Canada's help, his lawyer Robert Tibbo said Monday.

The former National Security Agency contractor who exposed U.S. government surveillance programs by disclosing classified material in 2013 has a new job: app developer.