'' In re Opinions and Orders of This Court Containing Novel or Significant Interpretations of Law'', Misc 16-01, United States

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), also called the FISA Court, is a U.S. federal court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants ag ...

, (October 19, 2016), or ''Motion of the American Civil Liberties Union for the Release of Court Records'', or ''ACLU Motion for Release of Court Records'', is a

legal case A legal case is in a general sense a dispute between opposing parties which may be resolved by a court, or by some equivalent legal process. A legal case is typically based on either civil or criminal law. In most legal cases there are one or mor ...

filed by the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

before the

Fisa The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ("FISA" , ) is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and the collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign pow ...

court.ACLU takes on Fisa court over secret decisions on surveillance laws, The Guardian, 10-19-2016

/ref>Yahoo, ACLU press U.S. to disclose secret surveillance orders, Reuters, 10-19-2016

/ref> The motion requests that the FISA court release numerous rulings on "novel" interpretations of the law, made since from the court's inception through 2015, at which time such rulings were statutorily mandated to be made public under the

USA Freedom Act The USA Freedom Act (, ) is a U.S. law enacted on June 2, 2015, that restored and modified several provisions of the Patriot Act, which had expired the day before. The act imposes some new limits on the bulk collection of telecommunication metada ...

. The court had interpreted the meaning of a broad swath of surveillance and cybersecurity laws without public disclosure, thereby creating a body of FISA court

common law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipresen ...

as precedent for subsequent cases, and which provides legal parameters for restricting and allowing actual surveillance practices. Unlike most other legal proceedings in the United States, the controversial Fisa court operates in secret for reasons of national security. From 2001 thorough 2015 it made a series of opinions that established a legal foundation (

precedent A precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. Common-law legal systems place great valu ...

) for expanding the government's surveillance activities. Among the opinions sought is that which interprets the original

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ("FISA" , ) is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and the collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign po ...

of 1978, in hopes it will expose an alleged

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

program to scan large numbers of

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

s without a search warrant, possibly required by the 4th Amendment of the

United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven ar ...

. Critics of the Fisa court, like United States Senator

Ron Wyden Ronald Lee Wyden (; born May 3, 1949) is an American politician and retired educator serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States Senate, United States senator from Oregon, a seat he has held since 1996 United Stat ...

(Oregon) have said these classified rulings are a body of "secret law" which throws away congressionally enacted privacy restrictions. The United States executive branch, and others, respond that US surveillance practices and proceedings must be kept in complete secrecy for national security reasons. The USA Freedom Act of 2015 mandates that the Fisa court release "novel" interpretations of the law (which thereby set precedent for future authority and cases), but does not clearly mandate retroactive disclosure. The ACLU argued that meaningful democratic debate and decisions about surveillance and cybersecurity cannot occur without the release of the precedent setting decisions prior to 2015.

External links

ACLU Motion

References

{{Authority control American Civil Liberties Union litigation United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court United States foreign relations case law