The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

After Obama NSA Speech, Spotlight on Congress

Lawmakers, civil rights advocates and tech companies shared a basic response to President Barack Obama's surveillance reforms: Good first step, but there's more to be done.

Congress needs to take action to address concerns about the scope of surveillance programs, Obama said. Much of the reaction focused on proposed changes to the most controversial program—the bulk collection of telephone records by the National Security Agency under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act.

Obama also called for greater transparency when it comes to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees NSA surveillance efforts.

A group of tech companies that are pushing for reforms—including Apple, Facebook, Microsoft Corp., Twitter, Yahoo! and AOL—issued a joint statement after Obama's speech. Several of the companies last year filed petitions in the surveillance court seeking the ability to provide more information about government demands for consumer data.

Obama Proposes Changes to Surveillance Court

President Barack Obama today announced reforms to the nation's surveillance programs in an effort to give federal judges greater oversight and to give the public more information and participation in the process.

Many of the changes focus on the role of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the panel of judges in Washington that reviews government applications to secretly review and monitor telephone and Internet communications.

In a 50-minute speech at the U.S. Department of Justice, Obama made his case for the necessity of the surveillance programs, which came under intense scrutiny after leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the scope of the agency's snooping.

The Morning Wrap

Surveillance reform: President Obama this morning will deliver a speech at the U.S. Department of Justice that outlines reform of government surveillance efforts. Obama is expected to announce an overhaul of the controversial National Security Agency bulk phone data collection program. Sens. Richard Blumenthal, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall wrote an op-ed for POLITICO trumpeting the push to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Voting rights: Federal lawmakers Thursday unveiled their effort to fix the Voting Rights Act following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gutted a key provision, The National Law Journal reports. Coverage in NPR here, and USA Today here.

Cell phone searches: The U.S. Supreme Court today could announce whether the justices will review the scope of Fourth Amendment protection concerning police searches of cell phones. The Associated Press reports: "The Supreme Court decided 40 years ago that police don't need a search warrant to look through anything a person is carrying when arrested. But that was long before smartphones gave people the ability to take with them the equivalent of millions of pages of documents or thousands of photographs."

CIA Sued Over Records About Nelson Mandela

A doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is suing the Central Intelligence Agency over documents about the late South African president and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela.

After Mandela’s death on Dec. 5, MIT student and historian Ryan Shapiro sent Freedom of Information Act requests to the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency requesting records that mentioned Mandela.

Shapiro, whose research includes exploring how dissent is policed, claims the CIA did not respond to his inquiry, which included a request for expedited processing. A response to that request, he alleged, was due Dec. 29. He filed a lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The Morning Wrap

Stronger Economy: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Friday painted a sunny picture for the U.S. economy in 2014, saying that numerous obstacles to growth in the past year seem to be subsiding, The Associated Press reports.

Federal Circuit: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is bracing for a flood of appeals in 2014, The Recorder reports.

BlackBerry Suit: BlackBerry Ltd. has sued Ryan Seacrest's Typo Products LLC, claiming the "American Idol" host's company copied designs for a keyboard case, Bloomberg reports.

DOJ Surveillance Law Memo Can Remain Secret, Court Says

The U.S. Department of Justice can keep secret a legal memo that addresses the authority and legality of the FBI's ability to acquire phone records without legal process, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled today.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, including one of the court's newest members, Sri Srinivasan, said the "deliberative process" legal privilege shields the document from public scrutiny. Read the opinion here.

The appeals court said the privilege—which can protect information that's shared among government officials as agencies develop policy and make decisions—applies to the entire Office of Legal Counsel memo. The D.C. Circuit panel, which included senior judges Harry Edwards and David Sentelle, declined to dig into whether any part of the document can be publicly disclosed.

The challengers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sued in 2011 under the Freedom of Information Act to try to obtain a copy of the memo, which addresses the FBI's pursuit of information from telecommunications companies. The FBI in late 2009 sought advice from the Office of Legal Counsel to respond to an internal review of the bureau's effort to collect phone records.

The Morning Wrap

Lawful: A federal judge in New York ruled Friday that the Nation Security Agency's gathering of information about all telephone calls placed in, to and from the United States is lawful, the New York Law Journal reports. U.S. District Judge William Pauley III concluded in American Civil Liberties Union v. Clapper that the NSA's telephony metadata program is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, given the "horrific" consequences of international terrorism as shown on Sept. 11, 2001.

Dismissed: A federal judge in New Orleans has thrown out nearly all remaining lawsuits against the federal government for damages that resulted from levees and floodwalls that failed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, The Times-Picayune reports.

Signing Up: More than 1 million people have signed up for health insurance through the troubled Healthcare.gov, The Associated Press reports.

Senate Panel Will Review Surveillance Report

Members of an Obama administration review group will testify on Capitol Hill next month about their recommendations to reform the government's surveillance authority, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) announced.

Leahy, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, said he will hold a Jan. 14 hearing on the group's 303-page report that offers changes to better protect privacy and civil liberties. It will be the committee's first full hearing in 2014.

"The recommendations from the President's Review Group make clear that it is time to recalibrate our government's surveillance programs," Leahy said in a written statement. "Momentum is building for real reform."

The Morning Wrap

NSA Reforms: President Barack Obama said Friday that he would look over the National Security Agency's surveillance activities during the holidays and would make a "pretty definitive statement" in January about potential reforms, The Washington Post reports. Speaking at a year-end news conference, Obama said that "just because we can do something doesn't mean we should."

IRS Head: The Senate on Friday confirmed John Koskinen to lead the Internal Revenue Service, POLITICO reports. He was the non-executive chairman of Freddie Mac from 2008 to 2011. The IRS hasn't had a permanent head in more than a year.

New Judge: The Senate on Friday also confirmed Brian Davis as a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Davis, a Nassau County circuit judge, was first nominated for the federal judgeship in February 2012.

NSA Review Panel Recommends Surveillance Court Reforms

The chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court should not hold the sole authority to appoint judges to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, an Obama administration review group said today in a lengthy report that offers reforms to better protect privacy and civil liberties.

The White House release of the 303-page report comes just days after a federal judge in Washington declared that the "almost-Orwellian" National Security Agency bulk collection of billions of phone records is likely unconstitutional. Read the report here.

The report, prepared by Richard Clarke, Michael Morrell, Geoffrey Stone, Cass Sunstein and Peter Swire, offers 46 recommendations, including several that are specific to the surveillance court. The recommendations include the creation of a public interest advocate to present a vantage other than the position of the U.S. Department of Justice; greater disclosure of opinions; and dividing the authority to appoint surveillance court judges among the Supreme Court justices.