According to the EFF, the signals intelligence agency and the Department of Justice were knowingly destroying key evidence in the case by purposefully misinterpreting earlier preservation orders by multiple courts, multiple times. In February, the DOJ asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to keep metadata beyond the five-year retention limit to address pending lawsuits from organizations like EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union, which alleged NSA illegally surveilled their clients. According to multiple accounts, the DOJ made a purposefully flawed case for keeping such records, fully expecting FISA Court Judge Reggie Walton to forbid such retention. He did, which allowed the DOJ to tell plaintiffs that the evidence of their surveillance had to be destroyed. A California district court trying EFF’s case then asked the DOJ in March to inform the FISA Court about its case, and preserve surveillance data collected under both White House and FISA authority as evidence. That order was ignored, forcing the EFF to file a temporary restraining order to halt the data’s destruction, and appeal the case to the FISA Court. Read more: dailycaller/2014/06/06/judge-orders-nsa-to-stop-destroying-evidence-for-the-third-time/#ixzz33vyThNyN
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 06:56:43 +0000