老澳门开奖结果

A federal appeals court in New York will hear oral argument on Tuesday in our lawsuit fighting for the public鈥檚 right to know the legal justifications for government spying.

The Freedom of Information Act suit seeks the release of secret memos written by government lawyers that provided the foundation for the warrantless surveillance of Americans鈥� international communications. In essence, these memos serve as the law that governs the executive branch. By withholding them, the government is flouting a core principle of democratic society: The law must be public.

The memos cover the government鈥檚 legal interpretations of Executive Order 12333, which was issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. It鈥檚 the primary authority under which the NSA conducts surveillance, and it encompasses an array of warrantless, high-tech spying programs. While much of this spying occurs outside the United States and is ostensibly directed at foreigners, it nonetheless vacuums up vast quantities of Americans鈥� communications. That鈥檚 because in today鈥檚 interconnected world, communications are frequently 鈥� where they may be collected, often in bulk, in the course of the NSA鈥檚 spying activities.

For example, the NSA has relied on EO 12333 to collect nearly 5 billion records per day on the , as well as hundreds of millions of from email and messaging accounts. It also intercepted private data from as that information traveled between those companies鈥� data centers located abroad.

Despite its breadth, surveillance under EO 12333 is by Congress or the courts. This makes learning how EO 12333 works even more important. We鈥檙e seeking basic information about the government鈥檚 interpretation of the legal boundaries of the executive order and the supposed protections for Americans whose communications are ensnared in this largely unchecked surveillance.

Although the government has disclosed some of this information over the course of the case, it鈥檚 improperly withholding key parts of a Justice Department memo that provided the basis for President George W. Bush鈥檚 unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program. It鈥檚 also withholding six other memos that set out the legal basis for surveillance activities under the order.

The government claims that these documents should be kept secret because the memos didn鈥檛 expressly and officially impose legal limits that spy agencies had to abide by. But because the memos contain what鈥檚 known as 鈥渨orking law鈥� 鈥� essentially the rules of the road for what the government does 鈥� they shouldn鈥檛 be withheld from the public. Working law includes the legal analyses that agencies accept and rely on as a basis for their actions.

The legal reasoning in these memos is precisely the kind of information that Congress intended to make public through the Freedom of Information Act. The Supreme Court has issued rulings supporting that principle, that 鈥渢he public is vitally concerned with the reasons鈥� undergirding agency actions. FOIA requires the government to make these reasons public whenever possible. Yet the district court wrongly decided in this case that the government could keep the documents hidden.

While the government might rightly withhold the operational details of EO 12333 programs for national security reasons, the public has a right to know the basic legal contours under which the NSA and CIA are gathering our personal communications.

When the government operates a massive surveillance apparatus in the shadows without meaningful legislative or judicial oversight, it undermines accountability to the people. Secret law has no place in a democracy.