Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Rejects Bid to Retain Metadata (VIDEO)
DOJ was trying to protect itself from lawsuits
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The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) rejected a request by the Justice Department to retain phone records longer than five years, the current maximum under federal law.
The administration requested the exception in order to defend itself from a variety of lawsuits, including one by the American Civil Liberties Union. As part of the request, the Justice department offered to make it illegal for analysts to look at the information.
The judge concluded that the plaintiffs against the NSA filed suit in order to bring about “…the destruction of the [telephone] metadata, not its retention.”
Since its inception in 1978, FISC has denied only 11 of over 30,000 requests by the government.
