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n1 [soylentnews.org] writes:

El Reg reports [theregister.co.uk]

Hopes that reform to the US government's mass surveillance infrastructure would yield real results have been dealt a blow after the opinion of a public advocate to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) was rejected.

Amy Jeffress was asked to give her opinion on the FBI searching in the vast PRISM database for details on US citizens. She declared that it was unconstitutional since it broke the Fourth Amendment (unreasonable searches).

Her opinion was rejected [PDF], however, by FISC judge Thomas Hogan and the practice will be allowed to continue.

Under the terms of the public advocate, Jeffress is not allowed to appeal the decision so she will not have an opportunity to pick apart the court's counterarguments.

[...] Hogan disagreed with that assessment however, saying that there was no statutory requirement that PRISM data only be used for foreign intelligence, and that the US government was required to retain any data that may be evidence of a crime.

He then argued that as a result, it didn't make sense for the US government to be required to retain information on a crime and then not be able to search that database.

[...] To make matters worse, we do not have the full text of Jeffress' argument – just Hogan's summary of it within his legal opinion. That opinion is also redacted. And the opinion itself is five months old. It was delivered in November 2015 but only published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) late Tuesday.

Publication of redacted, old opinions was also made on the DNI's Tumblr account rather than its own website at dni.gov, and the opinions of the FISC court have yet to appear on the FISC website either.

Original Submission