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The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has declined a request by the ACLU to release court records for rulings that pertain to the NSA surveillance program. The secretive FISC, which has issued only three public decisions in its history, will not disclose the details or reasoning behind critical rulings that evaluate the legality of the NSA surveillance program because the court argues that doing so would endanger national security and hamper the federal government’s intelligence gathering abilities.
The classified status of FISC documents is dictated by the executive branch of the federal government. The ACLU’s request called for independent judicial review of relevant documents so that wrongfully classified material could be declassified and disclosed to the general public. It is important to note that the ACLU did not request unconditional disclosure of classified material. The ACLU’s request explicitly excludes material that, upon judicial review, is deemed to be properly classified.
