In a blow to the NSA, a federal judge ruled that the widely criticized surveillance program is likely unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that the lawsuit brought activist Larry Klayman challenging the surveillance program would likely succeed if allowed to move forward. The judge then issued preliminary injunction that he later suspended in order to allow the Justice Department time to prepare an appeal.

According to the LA Times, the ruling marked the government’s first full-on courtroom defeat in the controversy that erupted after former NSA analyst Edward Snowden revealed the scope of the agency’s program.

The ruling broke new legal ground by deciding that today’s computerized gathering of all dialing records represents a new threat to privacy that was not fully recognized in the past.

"The government does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk data collection actually stopped an imminent attack," Leon said.