Secret Court Orders on Electronic Surveillance

Court Orders on Electronic Surveillance: The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against the Department of Justice, demanding records about secret new court orders that supposedly authorize the government's highly controversial electronic surveillance program that intercepts and analyzes millions of Americans' communications.

When press reports forced the White House to acknowledge the program in December of 2005, the administration claimed that the massive program could be conducted without warrants or judicial authorization of any kind. However, in January of this year, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) had authorized collection of some communications and that the surveillance program would now operate under its approval. EFF's suit comes after the Department of Justice failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records concerning the purported changes in the program.