President Obama's nominee to be the CIA's top lawyer says she disagrees with a federal judge's recent ruling that National Security Agency phone-data collection was unconstitutional.

Caroline Diane Krass, the principal deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, whom President Obama nominated Nov. 7 to be the CIA's general counsel, told the Senate Intelligence Committee today that she had a "different view" of the Fourth Amendment.

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"I think under Smith v. Maryland," a 1979 case involving the collection of phone data, "which I still consider to be good law, there is not a reasonable expectation of privacy in telephony data," Krass testified to the committee.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon declared that the NSA's wide-scale collection of phone records was likely unconstitutional.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, had asked Krass for her opinion on the ruling.