US court has rejected the motion for declaratory judgment filed by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Google and other companies asked for permission from the US Government and FBI to publish national security request data as a part of their transparency reports and filed a motion for declaratory judgment with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in an effort to provide greater transparency.
The court argues that the nondisclosure obligation provision in FISA orders require companies to protect the secrecy of authorized surveillance. According to the court companies are interpreting the court orders as “protecting only information about specific targets” and are allowed to broadly disclose information about the “Government sources and methods of surveillance.” The court states that such “a result is contrary to the text and purpose of the secrecy provisions in FISA on which the court orders are based.”
The response goes onto say that “words of a statue must be read in their context” and should be viewed with their place in the overall statutory scheme. The court notes that even though the Government seeks to make public as much information as possible about the activities pertaining to national security of US “there is an unquestioned tradition of secrecy, based on vitally important need to protect national security.”
According to the court, if the companies are allowed to disclose information as they propose, the disclosures could serious harm to national security. The court concludes that it should reject the companies’ contention and proposed disclosures.
The ruling also notes that as a Court of limited jurisdiction, it cannot provide declaratory relief regarding legal prohibitions on disclosure outside of FISA as the relief sought by the companies is well beyond the restraints imposed. Further, as the information which the companies intend to disclose is properly classified, such information is subject to prohibitions of disclosure of classified information and the court doesn’t have the jurisdiction to assess the applicability of such prohibitions.
“For the reasons stated above, the Motions should be denied”, concludes the ruling.
