Obama Lawyers Asked Secret Court to Bypass Public Court’s Decision on NSA Spying

    President Obama checks his BlackBerry phone. (AP / Jae C. Hong)

The Obama administration asked a federal court to resume the NSA surveillance programs ended by the expiration of parts of the Patriot Act on June 1.

After Congress voted last week for legislation ending the NSA’s ability to collect and store millions of Americans’ phone records, the Justice Department submitted a legal memorandum to the secretive federal court justifying authorization for NSA collection for a further six months.

Spencer Ackerman of The Guardian reports.

The legal request, filed nearly four hours after Barack Obama vowed to sign a new law banning precisely the bulk collection he asks the secret court to approve, also suggests that the administration may not necessarily comply with any potential court order demanding that the collection stop.

US officials confirmed last week that they would ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court – better known as the Fisa court, a panel that meets in secret as a step in the surveillance process and thus far has only ever had the government argue before it – to turn the domestic bulk collection spigot back on. …

[Justice Department national security chief John A. Carlin] asked the Fisa court to set aside a landmark declaration by the second circuit court of appeals. Decided on 7 May, the appeals court ruled that the government had erroneously interpreted the Patriot Act’s authorization of data collection as “relevant” to an ongoing investigation to permit bulk collection.

The Justice Department said in its memo: “[T]he government respectfully submits that it may seek and this court may issue an order for the bulk production of tangible things” under the law, “as it did in … prior related dockets,” .

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— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.