Secret surveillance court orders US to declassify PRISM-related Yahoo ruling

A secret court overseeing US government domestic surveillance activities has sided with Yahoo and ordered the Obama administration to declassify and publish a 2008 court decision justifying PRISM, the data collection program revealed last month by former security contractor Edward Snowden.

Judge Reggie Walton of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued Monday’s ruling. The government is expected to decide by August 26 which parts of the ruling may be published, according to a separate court filing by the Justice Department.

Controversial US data collection activities are overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and its appeals body, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. Both have been shrouded in secrecy since their creation more than three decades ago. The 2008 ruling stemmed from Yahoo’s challenge of the legality of broad, warrantless surveillance programs like PRISM.

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A secret court order has sided with Yahoo to declassify a court order for PRISM…

Publication of the ruling could provide a rare glimpse into how the government has legally justified its far-reaching data collection programs under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Legal experts who follow surveillance cases said the 2008 ruling may not reveal any strikingly novel legal reasoning by the government or the courts. But civil liberties advocates said the significance of the ruling may lie in the court’s decision itself to declassify the previously secret 2008 ruling.

“Unless the public knows what the laws mean, it can’t really assess how much power (it has) given its government,” said Patrick Toomey, a national security fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union. Monday’s ruling “is a suggestion that the FISA court is primed now to consider the government’s assertion of the necessity of secrecy,” Toomey said. “It’s a promising first step.”

The decision is also a victory for Yahoo, which ultimately complied with government orders to turn over user data. Other Internet companies, including Google and Facebook, began participating in PRISM in early 2009 soon after Yahoo lost its appeal before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.

It is not known if Yahoo, or any other party, has sought to appeal to the US Supreme Court. Until recent weeks, Yahoo was prohibited from discussing its activities in the secret courts or even acknowledging the existence of its legal challenge.

In June, after Snowden leaked information about PRISM to the Washington Post and the Guardian newspapers, Yahoo’s lawyers asked the courts and government to declassify and publish decisions upholding the constitutionality of the program.

In the coming weeks, the government is expected to publish the lower FISA court’s 2008 ruling in the Yahoo case and legal briefs related to the case. In an uncommon move, the government had previously agreed to declassify a heavily redacted version of the appeals court ruling in the case.

The government has long argued on the grounds of national security that the surveillance courts’ proceedings must be secret. Public and political reaction to Snowden’s revelations has put pressure on that position.

In June, Senators Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, and Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, introduced a bill that would require the government to declassify significant court rulings concerning the FISA court and its supervision of secret wiretapping programs. “Americans deserve to know how much information about their private communications the government believes it’s allowed to take under the law,” Merkley said.

Reuters