Judge demands investigation into US court secrecy rulings

A US judge has ordered an investigation into the secrecy of statements made by the US FISA court. This court is used by the NSA, among others, to get permission for wiretapping.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports this on the basis of court documents. This shows that the US Department of Justice must hand over rulings from the FISA court to the judge, so that it can investigate whether the documents in question were rightly kept out of the public eye. The lawsuit against the US Department of Justice in the FISA courts has been filed by the EFF itself.

The FISA court is used, among other things, by the NSA to secretly obtain permission for its activities. This concerns, for example, submitting data requests to companies or eavesdropping on citizens. In the case brought by EFF, it is argued that there is not sufficient substantiation to keep documents about the decisions of the FISA court secret. If the judge, after having conducted an investigation, agrees with this, the secret court will therefore have to make its decisions public.

Although the rulings of the FISA court are secret, information was leaked a number of times. For example, the NSA was previously whistled back by the secret court after illegally collecting e-mail messages from Americans. The court also had reservations about bulk storage of email metadata, but eventually allowed it.