FISC Says It Will Declassify Ruling That Forced Yahoo Into PRISM

from the how-much-black-ink-will-they-use-up? dept

Tue, Jul 16th 2013 3:15pm — Mike Masnick

Last month, we noted that, while it was known that a tech company had fought back against a surveillance effort by the government and lost, it hadn't yet been revealed who that company was. The NY Times then revealed that it was Yahoo!, and it involved whether or not Yahoo! would be involved in PRISM. Yahoo tried to fight it, lost, and had to comply -- but the details (of course) remained entirely sealed. It appears that's changing. Yahoo! has been asking the government if it can reveal more info, and eventually the government (at the very least) allowed Yahoo to admit that it was the party in the case. After that, Yahoo asked FISC if the ruling could be declassified, and the court has now told the government to review the ruling to figure out what can be declassified.

The Government shall conduct a declassification review of this Court's Memorandum Opinion of April 25, 2008, and (2) the legal briefs submitted by the parties to this Court in this matter. After such review, the Court anticipates publishing that Memorandum Opinion in a form that redacts any properly classified information.

Of course, given the government's history of over-redacting, I fully expect a document with a ridiculous amount of black ink applied (invest now in black ink!). However, I do wonder if this is part of the various FISC judges realizing that there's been a fairly strong outcry against their secret court with a big rubber stamp.

105b G 07 01 Rbw Signed Order 130715 (PDF)105b G 07 01 Rbw Signed Order 130715 (Text)

105b G 07 01 Reply in Support (PDF)105b G 07 01 Reply in Support (Text)

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Filed Under: declassify, doj, fisa, fisc, nsa, nsa surveillance, prism, surveillance
Companies: yahoo

11 Comments

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Akari Mizunashi (profile), 16 Jul 2013 @ 2:41pm

What's disheartening about this is Yahoo was also one of the first companies named in "turning over" info to the NSA.

Guess which side the public took when it came to Yahoo.

Mayer should be vocalizing the unfair treatment the media touted with the company's role with the NSA.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Jul 2013 @ 3:29pm

[REDACTED] is just one big [REDACTED] of [REDACTED].
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sorrykb (profile), 16 Jul 2013 @ 3:42pm

I think you're being too optimisitic, AC.

It's more likely to look like the May 2013 response to the ACLU.
www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/what-government-says-when-it-says-nothi ng
Or skip the article and go right to the released document: www.aclu.org/files/pdfs/email-content-foia/DOJ%20Crim%20Div%20docs/CRM-1.pdf
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Jul 2013 @ 3:51pm

I'm looking forward to seeing what's released.
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That One Guy (profile), 16 Jul 2013 @ 3:56pm

Re:
If you want to get a sneak peak, just stick your head into a pitch black bag, while standing in a pitch black room, and you'll get a pretty good idea of what the documents will look like.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Jul 2013 @ 4:24pm

With luck...
they'll issue a PDF with the redaction...an some sensible person will try highlighting the redaction and make the magical words appear.

One can only hope.
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Anonymous, 16 Jul 2013 @ 4:24pm

Re: Re:
If they're not leaked to the internet in unedited form, that is. ;)
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Matthew Cline (profile), 16 Jul 2013 @ 4:33pm

Re:
And then SCP-682 [DATA EXPUNGED], resulting in the loss of over 100 D-class personnel.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Jul 2013 @ 4:55pm

Re: Re:
I'm more hopeful than that. I think we'll get an interesting glimpse into what the court's been thinking.
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concerned citizen, 16 Jul 2013 @ 7:47pm

Re: optimism
why even bother going through the motions?
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Killer_Tofu (profile), 17 Jul 2013 @ 9:27am

How to un-redact
how-much-black-ink-will-they-use-up?

I don't know but I think once I have the electronic version up, if I put white out on my screen then that should counteract the blank ink and I should be able to see what the document says.

Just make sure I get to see it and I will let you know.

Provided OoTB hasn't already done this several times over and proved it won't work.
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