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Published every weekday, the Switchboard is your morning helping of hand-picked stories from the Switch team.

With Udalls defeat, NSA reformers lose an ally on the inside. "With Colorado Sen. Mark Udall's defeat Tuesday night, the Senate will lose one of its most vocal, most active and most powerfully positioned advocates for dialing back the intelligence community's surveillance powers," the Switch's Nancy Scola writes.

14 years after Bush v. Gore, we still cant get voting tech right."A handful of jurisdictions nationwide reported various computer-related problems that hampered some voters as Americans went to the polls on Tuesday," writes Cyrus Farivar at Ars Technica. Electronic voting issues occurred in Virginia, Indiana, North Carolina, Michigan, Connecticut and elsewhere.

Net neutrality was the biggest tech issue of the year. But nobody campaigned on it."Across the country, tech hasn't really emerged as a central campaign issue," reports the Switch's Brian Fung. "One of the few candidates to make it a part of his platform was Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor who coined the term "net neutrality" and he lost his bid for New York lieutenant governor in a nationally publicized primary."

Government requests for Facebook user data are up 24% in six months.Facebook says it has seen a sharp uptick in government requests for user data. "Between January and June, governments across the globe made 34,946 requests for data, according to the Menlo Park, Calif., companys latest transparency report," reports Sarah Parvini at the Los Angeles Times. "The United States was responsible for 15,433 of those requests, spanning 23,667 accounts."

Uber and its partners are pushing drivers into subprime loans."Two 'partners' in Uber's vehicle financing program are under federal investigation, but Uber hasn't slowed its aggressive marketing campaign to get drivers with bad credit to sign up for loans," reports Nitasha Tiku at Valleywag.

Andrea Peterson covers technology policy for The Washington Post, with an emphasis on cybersecurity, consumer privacy, transparency, surveillance and open government.

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The Switchboard: NSA reformers lose one of their biggest allies in Senate

Data Days 2014 - Keynote by Anne Roth, NSA Inquiry Committee
Keynote at Data Days 2014 by Anne Roth, NSA Inquiry Committee Why Privacy Matters, recorded in Berlin, October 2nd 2014. Presentation Slides: http://slides...

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Data Days 2014 - Keynote by Anne Roth, NSA Inquiry Committee - Video

why i wanted to expose the federal reserve and nsa to the world...

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why i wanted to expose the federal reserve and nsa to the world... - Video

MidPoint | Larry Klayman to discuss the suit he has filed against the NSA
A former Justice Department attorney and the founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch joins MidPoint to discuss the suit he has filed against the NSA for eavesdropping which will be heard...

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MidPoint | Larry Klayman to discuss the suit he has filed against the NSA - Video

This undated photo provided by the National Security Agency (NSA) shows its headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.  NSA via Getty Images

WASHINGTON - Three U.S. appeals court judges struggled Tuesday over whether the National Security Agency's phone data surveillance program is an intelligence-gathering tool that makes the nation safer or an intrusive threat that endangers privacy.

The judges - all appointed by Republican presidents - expressed uncertainty about where to draw the line between legal surveillance and violations of constitutional rights.

Since 2006, the FBI has obtained orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court directing phone companies to produce telephone "metadata" - outgoing phone numbers dialed and numbers from incoming calls - to the government.

The NSA consolidates the records into a searchable database in the hunt for terror suspects.

During the hour-and-a-half hearing, Judge David Sentelle questioned whether it is an invasion of privacy if the NSA simply collects the data, stopping short of using it.

Is it not an invasion "with mere collection?" asked Sentelle.

It is not, replied Justice Department lawyer H. Thomas Byron.

Arguing against the NSA program, activist attorney Larry Klayman disputed Byron, telling Judge Janice Rogers Brown that "collection is enough" to justify pursuing the lawsuit against the government.

Klayman won the first round in December when U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a Republican appointee, ruled that the NSA's surveillance program likely runs afoul of the Constitution's ban on unreasonable searches. The government is seeking to have Leon's ruling thrown out.

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Federal appeals court struggles over NSA program's legality