Civil liberties activists on Wednesday asked the nation’s shadowy intelligence court to release at least 23 legal opinions that have remained secret for years.
In a filing, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to release significant rulings it has issued since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
{mosads}The court, which oversees some of the nation’s most sensitive intelligence operations, usually operates under a veil of secrecy, and its opinions are only rarely released.
But an intelligence reform law signed by President Obama last summer, which ended a major National Security Agency (NSA) program, also required the court to consider declassifying any order or opinion “that includes a significant construction or interpretation of any provision of law.”
The Justice Department has argued that the law is not retroactive and only applies to court opinions issued after last June, when it went into effect.
On Wednesday, the ACLU went to the FISC to challenge that determination.
“Based on public disclosures, it is clear that over the past fifteen years the FISC has developed an extensive body of law — one that defines the reach of the government’s surveillance powers and broadly affects the privacy interests of Americans,” ACLU lawyers claimed in their motion. “Yet, even today, many of the FISC’s significant opinions and orders have not been disclosed to the public.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has previously tried to force release of the FISC opinions through a federal district court, but it has so far been unsuccessful.
Among other things, the ACLU demanded to see the 2015 court order that required Yahoo to scan all emails being sent to accounts that it was hosting. The revelation of the system this month sent ripples through the U.S. tech world.
“As the revelation of the Yahoo! order underscores, an unknown number of legal opinions and orders assessing the constitutionality of and statutory basis for the government’s surveillance activities remain hidden from the public,” ACLU lawyers claimed on Wednesday.
The rights group listed 22 orders it is aware of in addition to the Yahoo order that it wanted to be declassified. Among them are orders about the breadth of the NSA’s surveillance, the government’s use of malicious software and its ability to force private companies to help its work.