A federal judge in California sided mostly with the United States government this week in a decision handed down concerning classified documents pertaining to the National Security Agency\u2019s secret surveillance programs.<\/p>\n
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, a justice in the US District Court for the district of Northern California, said on Monday that the Department of Justice does not have to disclose two sets of documents among the three requested in a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a California-based digital rights group.<\/p>\n
The EFF has long sought the release of NSA documents related to legal rulings made in secret by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the names of phone companies compelled to hand over user data to the NSA and a 2012 legal memo concerning the US Census and Patriot Acts. The NSA\u2019s failure to adhere to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the EFF prompted the advocacy group to file suit asking the court to compel their release, but on Monday Judge Gonzalez Rogers said in a 13-page decision that the Justice Dept. was largely right to withhold those filings and need only make public the Census memo.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving carefully considered the papers and arguments submitted,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0the judge wrote,\u00a0\u201c\u2026the Court hereby Orders that the cross-motions are GRANTED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART. DOJ has established a proper basis for withholding, in full, the FISC orders and opinions at issue, and for withholding all names of telecommunications providers participating in the Call Records Collection Program, under FOIA Exemptions 1 and 3. Thus, summary judgment is GRANTED in favor of DOJ on the claim for disclosure of this information. However, DOJ has not established that the Census Memorandum is properly withheld under Exemption 5, and EFF is GRANTED summary judgment on its claim for FOIA violation as to this document.” The FISC documents sought by the EFF consist of five rulings made by the secret court between 2006 and 2010, and Gonzalez Rogers agreed with the DOJ\u2019s assessment that the flings have been properly withheld and that disclosing them could compromise national security.<\/p>\n \u201cThe orders discuss specific techniques authorized by the FISC, the details of the underlying investigations and details concerning how the government operationally and technically implements the FISC authorized techniques, which the government continues to employ,<\/em>\u201d the judge wrote.\u00a0\u201cDisclosure of the documents would reveal intelligence activities or methods described in the FISC orders could allow targets of national security investigations to divine what information was collected when, as well as gaps in surveillance, thus providing a roadmap for evading surveillance.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
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