EFF: FBI should release surveillance justification document
The Federal Bureau of Investigation should make public a legal opinion it used to justify a past telephone records surveillance program because other agencies may still be relying on the document for surveillance justifications, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued in court Tuesday.
EFF lawyer Mark Rumold asked a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to order the FBI to disclose a 2010 legal opinion from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, telling the judges that the OLC report amounts to final policy that agencies are required to disclose under open-records law. The EFF filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the OLC opinion in February 2011 and later filed a lawsuit after the DOJ rejected its request.
The FBI telephone surveillance program, which operated from 2003 to 2007, isn’t directly related to a controversial National Security Agency telephone records collection program disclosed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden earlier this year. However it’s possible for other surveillance agencies to use the OLC opinion to justify their surveillance programs going forward, Rumold said after the hearing. It doesn’t appear that the OLC limited its opinion to the FBI, he said.
