Appeals court rules that opinion on FBI phone surveillance can remain secret

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a confidential Justice Department legal opinion on the scope of the FBI’s surveillance authority can remain secret. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected an effort by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to make public a January 2010 memo from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that allowed the FBI to informally gather customer phone call records from telecommunications companies. In a 20-page decision, the court agreed with a lower-court judge that the government has properly withheld the memo under an exception to the Freedom of Information Act. “The District Court correctly concluded that the unclassified portions of the OLC Opinion could not be released without harming the deliberative processes of the government by chilling the candid and frank communications necessary for effective governmental decision-making,” the court said in its opinion written by D.C. Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards. A Justice Department spokesman said the department was “pleased with the decision.” But Mark Rumold, a lawyer at the EFF, said the civil liberties group was “disappointed by today’s decision, which allows the government to continue to secretly reinterpret federal surveillance laws in ways that diverge significantly from the public’s understanding of these laws.”...more