Surveillance court to declassify documents in 2008 Yahoo case

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court will declassify a 2008 court case in which Yahoo protested the government's collection of its users' data.

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“It could be an extremely positive sign about the court beginning to think harder about openness and to understand its legal rulings,” he says, adding that Watlon’s order “shows that the FISA court is beginning to think on its own about the public’s need to see [its] opinions.”

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“Yahoo is asking for the public to know under what laws we live,” says Jennifer Granick, the Director of the Civil Liberties program at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. She understands that the government would have specific information about a particular person that is kept secret, but “the idea that the secret court has secret laws that govern our lives is really reprehensible.”

Though it is unlikely that the declassification of this 2008 case will create a sea change in the way the FISC is run, making this case public could create a public expectation of greater transparency in the future, says Ms. Granick.

It is rare for any documents from FISC to be made public – and surveillance discussions are usually kept between the government attorneys, trying to get permission to gather information on someone, and the court. The PRISM surveillance program is unique in that it involves a third-party information provider: the Internet companies. This means that the companies' lawyers are also privy to what is going on inside FISC.

These unique circumstances led Google to publish a motion it filed with FISC requesting permission to release the number of user data requests is received under FISA.

After details of the PRISM program were revealed, Yahoo, Facebook, and Microsoft released aggregate statistics about the number of data information requests they received pertaining to national security, though they were unable to say how many of these requests were made under FISA.

In 2012, the US Department of Justice submitted 1,789 electronic search applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Only one application was withdrawn and no requests were denied, according to the most recent FISA report. In addition, the FBI sent 15,229 National Security Letter requests for information concerning 6,223 different US citizens, according to a report by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.