In rare loss, FISA court rejects Justice Dept request to retain data | UNCONSTITUTIONAL LOSES ONE, FINALLY | U$A Robed Gavel Tyrant Finally Sees LIGHT??? ~ Tunnel Vision has been an OFF-SHORE 'Pension' Digital DUST | Wake-Up 'Merican 'Jurisprudence'

AFP Photo / Chip Somodevilla

March 08, 2014 Get short URL

The federal surveillance court that has approved all but a fraction of the NSA's intelligence requests nonetheless rejected a petition by the government to retain phone records for longer than five years, as is currently allowed.

The US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (also known as the FISA Court) was established in 1978 as a gatekeeper that would approve or deny surveillance warrants against suspect foreign enemies living inside the United States. Since that date, the court has denied 11 of the nearly 34,000 surveillance requests by the government.

While judges on the court have said that they force the government to make changes to approximately one-quarter of those requests, the .03 percent decline rate has been startling to civil liberties advocates.
Judge Reggie Walton acted as a rare bump in that road this week when he denied the US Department of Justice’s request to keep the telephone metadata collected by the NSA past the five-year deadline. The Obama administration had asked the FISA Court to bend the rules so that the Justice Department could adequately defend itself from a series of lawsuits filed by various groups, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) chief among them.

US attorneys argued in a court filing last month that when “preservation of information is required, the duty to preserve supersedes statutory or regulatory requirements or records-management policies that would otherwise result in the destruction of the information.”

Authorities proposed that the information be retained, although they sought to make it illegal for any NSA analyst to examine the data as they would information that is not five years old.

That is not enough of an excuse, Walton ruled, saying that he found that rationale to be “simply unresponsive” and that the groups that have filed suit are hoping for “the destruction of the [telephone] metadata, not its retention.”

The judge concluded that any reason to keep the telephone records is outweighed by the damage that such a decision would do to privacy.

Justice Department attorneys may have expected such a decision from Walton who, even as chief judge of the FISA Court, has admitted skepticism with the program since the government’s methods were first revealed. Judge Walton told The Washington Post in August that the court, which is supposed to act as the final barometer, is unable to verify the very information provided by law enforcement.

“The FISC is forced to rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided to the court,” he wrote. “The FISC does not have the capacity to investigate issues of noncompliance, and in that respect the FISC is in the same position as any other court when it comes to enforcing [government] compliance with its orders.” 

Comments (6)

 

Tessa 08.03.2014 18:20

Maybe now that the public is aware of what is going on and are not happy about it, these judges can sprout a pair and stop letting the government push them into what they are aware of as bad rulings. This judge was a FISA court judge however and should have stood up for the public a very long time ago. When this all shakes out, we will not forgive and we will not forget those that betrayed the people of this country.

 

paradigm-respawn 08.03.2014 17:11

When the Mass of Information You Collect is Beyond what Your Ability to Process in Real Time - What Makes You Believe that Anything will Change 5 Years Downstream ?

Collectin g PetaBytes of Data cannot Protect the American People from a Specific Live Threat of Today

We need a ReThink on Who and What is the Focus instead of Throwing Handfuls of Dollar Bills into the Air

 

Oby Unthank 08.03.2014 05:05

"the court has denied 11 of the nearly 34,000 surveillance requests by the government."

This is not a court, it's a rubber stamp process.
All part of a SECRET process to control the people.
When government does things IN SECRET, beware! citizens are not allowed to have any SECRETS, only government and corporations so they can control and fleece the people, the long suffering 99%.

http://rt.com/usa/loss-fisa-rejects-justice-retain-574/

[sidebar:  When the OFFSHORE Pension Fund is AT LONG LAST, EXPOSED FULLY IN REAL COURT, then the disturbing reality of how FRAUD has governed the U$A and what we have now: 

FRAUD that is a CRIME and the U.S. Constitution was sacrificed for the so called COURT SYSTEM which is RICO Global and Americans' have no more pounds of flesh for SHYLOCK!]