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A US JUDGE HAS ruled in favour of the National Security Agency (NSA) in a personal privacy case, despite the protests of rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Jewel vs the NSA was ruled on by judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, California, who told plaintiffs that they had failed to prove that the government violated a long established hope that a man's home is his castle', or rather the Fourth Amendment.

The EFF expressed its disappointment at the latest stage in a case in which it has been involved for some time.

"EFF will keep fighting the unlawful, unconstitutional surveillance of ordinary Americans by the US government," the group said in a statement.

"Today's ruling was not a declaration that NSA spying is legal. The judge decided instead that 'state secrets' prevented him from ruling whether the programme is constitutional.

"It would be a travesty of justice if our clients are denied their day in court over the secrecy' of a programme that has been front page news for nearly a decade.

"Judge White's ruling does not end our case. The judge's ruling only concerned upstream internet surveillance, not the telephone records collection nor other mass surveillance processes that are also at issue."

The EFF has looked to crack open the government during the case and get it to talk more openly about surveillance sweeps.

"The American people know that their communications are being swept up by the government under various NSA programmes," it said.

"The government's attempt to block true judicial review of its mass, untargeted collection of content and metadata by pretending that the basic facts about how the spying affects the American people are still secret is outrageous and disappointing."

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US judge backs NSA in people vs privacy case