The FBI should release a legal opinion it used to justify its phone surveillance program because other agencies can still rely on the document as justification for surveillance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued in court on Tuesday.
EFF attorney Mark Rumold asked a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to order the FBI to disclose the 2010 legal opinion from the U.S. State Department, arguing to the judges that the report is a final policy that agencies are required to disclose by law. The EFF filed a Freedom of Information request in February 2011 and then filed a lawsuit after the U.S. Justice Department denied its request.
The FBI 's phone surveillance program , which operated from 2003 to 2007, is not directly linked to the controversial phone collection program revealed by Edward Snowden earlier this year. However, it is possible for other surveillance agencies to use the legal document from the U.S. State Department's legal counsel to justify their surveillance programs, Rumold said after the hearing.
