BBC News, 16
July 2013
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Stories
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| The NSA's Prism surveillance system has prompted protests around the world |
Yahoo has
won a legal fight that will see papers from a key 2008 court case declassified
and published.
The 2008
case is widely seen as pivotal in letting the NSA establish Prism and start
gathering data on web use.
The US
government has been given until 29 July to say how long it will need to prepare
the documents for publication.
Earlier
this month, Yahoo filed papers with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
(Fisc), seeking permission to publicise the documents it had filed in the
original case and the government's response. The Fisc decides whether official
applications to carry out surveillance should go ahead.
Yahoo took
the legal action to show how vehemently it had objected to government requests
to hand over data.
In
addition, it said, the transcript of the 2008 case would reveal more about how
the US government had justified its wide-ranging surveillance plan known as
Prism.
In a
statement, Yahoo said the release of the documents would "contribute
constructively to the ongoing public discussion around online privacy".
Details
about Prism were revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who has now
fled the US.
The US
government has not filed any objections to the plan to disclose the court
documents but will review the papers before publication so it can redact
information it does not want published.
"The
administration has said they want a debate about the propriety of the
surveillance, but they haven't really provided information to inform that
debate," Mark Rumold, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
rights group, said.
"So
declassifying these opinions is a very important place to start."
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