Secret Surveillance Court May Reveal Some Secrets

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The secret court that adjudicates national security-related information requests lifted the veil on its operations a tiny bit, ruling that portions of one of its earlier opinions could be disclosed to the public.

The ruling came in a case by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. It had pressed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow one of its opinions to be disclosed under a Freedom of Information Act request. The government argued that there is good reason to keep the case sealed. The court said it saw no reason to prohibit disclosing the documents sought under the Freedom of Information request. It left it to a federal court in the District of Columbia to make a ruling on the specific Freedom of Information Act litigation. In other words, the court said it would not stand in the way of another court, if it ruled in favor of the organization’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.


Secret Surveillance Court May Reveal Some Secrets For the first time, secret court won’t block release of NSA opinion (ars technica) Analysis: Secret Intelligence Court Hardly Ever Says No (National Journal)