Federal judge rules that U.S. can keep surveillance court orders secret

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/11/federal-judge-rules-that-u-s-can-keep-surveillance-court-orders-secret/

Federal judge rules that U.S. can keep surveillance court orders secret
By Reuters
Monday, August 11, 2014 20:19 EDT
By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – The U.S. government need not turn over a secret surveillance court’s orders or the names of phone companies helping it collect call records, because it might reveal methods needed to protect national security, a federal judge decided on Monday.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, rejected the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s argument that the U.S. Department of Justice should turn over the materials, in the wake of unauthorized disclosures last year by a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden.

The EFF noted that the government had already declassified hundreds of pages of other documents discussing data collection under the U.S. Patriot Act, including some that the data privacy advocacy group had requested. These declassifications came after Snowden’s leaks had been revealed.

Rogers, though, said disclosing orders of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which handles federal requests for surveillance warrants, could “provide a roadmap” for targets of national security investigations to evade surveillance.