Dow Jones asks court to unseal long-completed digital surveillance cases

Serving as an outgoing United States magistrate judge, Brian Owsley had decided that one of his final judicial acts would be to unseal more than 100 of his own judicial orders involving digital surveillance that he himself had sealed at the government’s request.

But not long after Judge Owsley's move in 2013, a US district judge vacated Owsley’s order and resealed them all. That order itself was then sealed.

"I don't think it's that normal," Judge Owsley said.

In a rare move, the media company Dow Jones filed a new motion with the US District Court in the Southern District of Texas asking it to unseal all such documents and to make them available publicly online. The motion was filed in conjunction with a new report from The Wall Street Journal (Dow Jones is the newspaper’s parent company) showing that the sealing of such court files is on the rise. Those orders initially had been sealed as they had involved forms of digital surveillance that the government doesn’t want revealed, including the use of pen/trap orders, tower dumps, and stingrays (devices that act as fake cell phone towers).