EFF Highlights Findings From FISC Opinion Reauthorizing Bulk Telephone Metadata Surveillance

The first line of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s opinion that reauthorized the NSA's mass surveillance of telephone records -- “the more things change, the more they stay the same” -- is telling, wrote Electronic Frontier Foundation Staff Attorney Andrew Crocker and Activism Director Rainey Reitman in a blog post Wednesday. The court may have referred to the collection program running one last time until Nov. 29, but could have “also been describing its disappointing business-as-usual approach to deciding how the recently passed USA Freedom Act affected this program,” Crocker and Reitman said. “Bigger changes are on the horizon, but in the meantime the court reached the unsurprising conclusion that the phone records program can continue because of language in USA Freedom allowing for a six-month transition period before the Act’s stronger limitations on bulk surveillance take full effect,” they said. Noteworthy items from the FISC opinion include the court’s accepting an amicus brief, allowing bulk collection to continue for six months, criticizing the 2nd Circuit’s view that the telephone metadata surveillance program was illegal (see 1505070041), and saying third-party doctrine trumps constitutional concerns, Crocker and Reitman said. The third-party U.S. legal theory says if someone gives information to a third party, the person has no right to expect privacy for that information.