The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

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.

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.

Verizon Wants Claims in NSA Surveillance Suit Dismissed

Shortly after a federal judge in Washington ruled that a National Security Agency phone surveillance program is "almost certainly" unconstitutional, Verizon Communications Inc. moved to dismiss claims against the company in the case.

The challengers sued to hold Verizon liable for allegedly complying with government requests for American citizens' phone records. Verizon said that if it was obeying court orders to provide that information-a claim the company didn't admit-that would make the telecommunications company immune from liability for any alleged privacy violations.

"Companies are required to comply with court orders and cannot be sued for allegedly doing so," Verizon's attorney, Randolph Moss of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, argued in the brief.

Judge Finds NSA Surveillance 'Almost Certainly' Violates Privacy Rights

The National Security Agency's bulk collection of telephone records likely violates privacy rights of individual Americans, a federal trial judge in Washington ruled today.

Describing the government's surveillance efforts as "almost-Orwellian," U.S. District Judge Richard Leon found the challengers in a lawsuit in Washington were likely to succeed on their Fourth Amendment privacy claims.

Leon granted an injunction that would have stopped national security officials from collecting telephone record data on two of the plaintiffs. (The challengers have not certified a class to date.) However, the judge put that order on hold pending the government’s likely appeal.

Air Force G.C. Heads to Arnold & Porter

A former general counsel for the U.S. Air Force who previously served as the top lawyer in the U.S. Army is headed to Arnold & Porter, the firm announced today.

Charles Blanchard is joining as partner the firm’s government contracts and national security practices in early January. Blanchard will focus on defense clients, particularly on issues that include weapons systems procurement, enforcement, classified programs and cyber security, the firm said.

Blanchard left the public sector because, he said, he felt his work was done and it was time for someone new to take over.

“In my experience after three or four years in these positions, it becomes comfortable, you’ve accomplished what you wanted to accomplish,” Blanchard said in an interview.

D.C. Circuit Weighs Challenge to Groin Searches at Guantanamo Bay

A federal appeals court in Washington heard arguments today over a body search policy at Guantanamo Bay that lawyers for detainees contend restricts access to counsel.

A trial judge in July blocked the new policy, concluding the groin-area searches were religiously and culturally offensive to detainees and that the new policy was aimed at interfering with detainees' ability to meet with their lawyers. The U.S. Department of Justice today, defending the searches, asked a three-judge appellate panel to reverse that ruling. The government argued the trial judge lacked jurisdiction to block the new policy.

U.S. Department of Justice lawyer Edward Himmelfarb began arguments by explaining that the searches involved full-body frisks of fully clothed detainees. Judge Thomas Griffith jumped in, asking about the government's justification for groin-area searches detainees found "provocative" and "offensive."

Former Virginia U.S. Attorney Joins Davis Polk

Neil MacBride, the former U.S. attorney for Eastern District of Virginia, is joining Davis Polk & Wardwell's Washington office as a partner, the firm said today.

After four years overseeing high-profile investigations and prosecutions of government leakers, terrorists and corrupt public officials, MacBride will put that experience to use on the other side of the courtroom as a member of the firm's white-collar defense and government investigations practice.

"At sort of a macro level, I always regarded it as one of the world's great law firms," MacBride said in an interview today. "It's a place I've respected from afar." He said the firm partnership voted him in this week but he won't start until early next year.

D.C. Circuit Denies Terror Victims Access to Frozen Funds

Hundreds of thousands of dollars tied to Iranian financial institutions and frozen by U.S. banks remain off-limits to terrorism victims, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled today. The problem, the court said, was the lack of proof the Iranian government owned the bank accounts at issue.

Families of victims of the 1996 bombings at the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Saudi Arabia sued the Iranian government in 2000, accusing Iran of supporting the terrorist group behind the attack. The families won a default judgment—Iran never participated in the case—and a judge awarded approximately $591 million in damages.

The plaintiffs began what U.S. District Senior Judge Royce Lamberth once described as the "often-frustrating and always-arduous" task of finding Iranian assets to satisfy judgments. In August 2011, Lamberth ordered Sprint Nextel Corp., to pay more than $610,000 it owed to an Iranian state telecommunications agency to the plaintiffs instead.

Jeh Johnson Wins Praise As Homeland Security Nominee

Former U.S. Department of Defense general counsel Jeh Johnson received strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill today on his nomination as secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The top Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), predicted the confirmation of Johnson, a litigation partner in the Washington office of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

"When you're confirmed—I'm not going to say if, I think you're going to be confirmed—I surely hope we can work together through the upcoming years to fix the Department of Homeland Security where it's broken and make our nation must more secure," Coburn said.

This Week in The National Law Journal

The Abortion Docket: Senior Washington correspondent Marcia Coyle reports: "In the past two years, anti-abortion groups have seeded state laws with abortion restrictions. Challengers to court rulings for and against those laws now are knocking on the doors of the U.S. Supreme Court."

Targets: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is taking on lawyers, filing more suits against attorneys almost more than any other group, Jenna Greene reports this week. "When the consumer agency opened its doors in July 2011, banks, mortgage companies and other lenders braced for lawsuits — and loudly complained about the new agency's powers. But lawyers were quiet, seemingly unaware that they, too, could find themselves in the CFPB's cross hairs," Greene writes.

The Bureau: Former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann talks with Andrew Ramonas about the experience as one of the top government lawyers in the country. Weissmann, who's now teaching at New York University School of Law, discusses the challenges of building financial crimes cases, and he talks about surveillance and privacy.