“The federal government has not justified its excessive secrecy about the massive telephone surveillance program known as Hemisphere, a court ruled in an EFF Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on Thursday.” schwit1 quotes the EFF announcement: As a result, the federal government must submit roughly 260 pages of previously withheld or heavily redacted records to the court so that it can review them and decide whether to make more information about Hemisphere public.
Hemisphere is a partnership between AT&T and federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies that allows police almost real-time access to telephone call detail records. The program is both extremely controversial — AT&T requires police to hide its use from the public — and appears to violate our First and Fourth Amendment rights.
Government lawyers had argued the disputed documents were restricted to use at the federal level, but the court remained unconvinced, especially “after EFF demonstrated that many of them appeared to have been given to state and local law enforcement.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.