{"id":124189,"date":"2014-06-13T23:59:55","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T23:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=124189"},"modified":"2014-06-13T23:59:55","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T23:59:55","slug":"citing-intense-public-interest-concern-mass-surveillance-judge-orders-doj-turn-secret-legal-opinions-court-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/sicence-technology\/citing-intense-public-interest-concern-mass-surveillance-judge-orders-doj-turn-secret-legal-opinions-court-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Citing \u201cIntense Public Interest and Concern\u201d Over Mass Surveillance, Judge Orders DOJ to Turn Over Secret Legal Opinions for Court to Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge today\u00a0ordered<\/a>\u00a0the Department of Justice to hand over key opinions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (also known as the \u201cFISA court\u201d) so the judge can directly review whether information about mass surveillance was improperly withheld from the public.<\/p>\n

The order is another victory in EFF\u2019s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the DOJ, which sought to reveal how the government uses Section 215 of the Patriot Act to secretly gather communications records from millions of American citizens. The suit has already forced the government to releasethousands of pages<\/a>\u00a0of FISA court opinions, internal executive branch reports, congressional briefings, and other documents concerning Section 215. Documents released as part of the suit have shown the NSA\u00a0repeatedly misled<\/a>\u00a0the FISA court concerning the operation of the bulk call records program, nearly\u00a0leading the court to terminate the program altogether<\/a>.<\/p>\n

EFF Staff Attorney Mark Rumold argued for further disclosure of records during a\u00a0June 3 hearing<\/a>\u00a0in Oakland. The resulting order, issued today, applies to 66 pages of five still-secret FISA court opinions. While Judge Yvonne Gonzales-Rogers may ultimately decide the documents cannot be released, her order reveals an appreciation of the civil liberties concerns as well as skepticism of the government\u2019s blanket refusal to release any portion of the opinions.<\/p>\n

The judge writes:<\/p>\n

\n

The evidence in the record shows that some documents, previously withheld in the course of this litigation and now declassified, had been withheld in their entirety when a disclosure of reasonably segregable portions of those documents would have been required. Further, the withholding followed an Order from this Court expressing concern that the agency had failed to explain sufficiently why the withheld documents \u201cwould be so replete with descriptions of intelligence activities, sources and methods that no portions thereof would contain\u201d reasonably segregable and producible, non-exempt information\u2026<\/p>\n

Further, the Court finds that the public\u2019s interest in the documents withheld is significant. The scope and legality of the government\u2019s current surveillance practices of broad swaths of its citizenry is a topic of intense public interest and concern. \u201cThe Freedom of Information Act was aimed at ending secret law and insuring that this country have \u2018an informed, intelligent electorate.\u201d \u2026 In light of this public interest,\u00a0in camera\u00a0<\/i>review to assure that the agency is complying with its obligations to disclose non-exempt material is certainly merited. Finally, as the parties have narrowed the range of documents for review, the burden on judicial resources is not significant.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

More information on EFF\u2019s battle to obtain legal opinions about the government\u2019s mass surveillance operations is available on our\u00a0Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act case page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reprinted<\/a> with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal judge today\u00a0ordered\u00a0the Department of Justice to hand over key opinions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (also known as the \u201cFISA court\u201d) so the judge can directly review whether information about mass surveillance was improperly withheld from the public. The order is another victory in EFF\u2019s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-124189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news","7":"category-sicence-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}