WYDEN SEEKS DECLASSIFICATION OF FISA COURT OPINIONS

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote to the Public Interest Declassification
Board (PIDB) last week to request that it review the classified
opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FIS) Court from the
last ten years and make recommendations regarding their classification
or declassification.

The FIS Court not only grants (or, rarely, denies) authorization for
domestic intelligence surveillance. It also from time to time
reinterprets the requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act, producing a secret body of common law.

In response to a motion filed by the ACLU last year, Judge John D.
Bates of the FIS Court acknowledged that the Court had issued several
"legally significant decisions that remain classified." The anomaly of
secret law, including classified FISA court rulings, was explored in an
April 30, 2008 hearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee chaired
by Sen. Russ Feingold.

"It is impossible for Congress to evaluate the effectiveness of the
nation's surveillance laws without a thorough understanding of how the
court is interpreting those laws," wrote Sen. Wyden. "This is exactly
the kind of issue that the Public Interest Declassification Board was
created to tackle."

The PIDB is a congressionally-chartered presidential advisory board
that is supposed to provide recommendations on classification policy
and to review the classification status of contested documents. It is
composed of private sector personnel appointed by the President and the
Congress. The current chairman is Martin Faga, a former director of the
National Reconnaissance Office.

Although the PIDB statute authorizes the Board to act on congressional
requests, such requests are supposed to be "made by the committee of
jurisdiction," not by individual members. Consequently, it is
uncertain whether the PIDB will act upon Senator Wyden's letter. PIDB
officials were not immediately available for comment.

A copy of Senator Wyden's July 25 letter and news release is here:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2008/07/wyden072508.html