Do Americans have a right to know the extent that the government surveils them?
For nearly a decade, activists have been trying to get the federal government to determine how much a secretive surveillance court can keep its conclusions out of the public eye. Today the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Since 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been filing motions to get the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to release secret opinion connected to the collection of Americans’ communications data. The first motions began after Edward Snowden’s disclosures that the National Security Agency (NSA) was using Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to scoop up millions of Americans’ internet and phone records, without warrants and without the targets’ knowledge, allegedly as part of the post-9/11 war on terrorism. Much of what the FISC, authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, does is classified, because part of its purpose is to permit the covert observation of people who may represent a threat to national security. But another part of the court’s purpose is to make sure that Americans are protected from unauthorized secret surveillance. Snowden’s disclosures suggested a breakdown in those protections.
