Secretive FISA Court Sides With Yahoo Over Disclosure of 2008 PRISM Case

In 2008, lawyers for Web company Yahoo sought to avoid becoming part of the National Security Agency’s PRISM surveillance program by fighting it in a case before the secretive U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

On July 15, that court ruled that it would unseal documents related to the case so Yahoo could prove that it objected to participating in the notorious PRISM program, disclosed last month by former NSA employee Edward Snowden and later confirmed by the U.S. government. The three-page order requires the government to review the case and say which documents from the docket can be declassified by July 29. The order says that government lawyers took “no position” over whether or not the documents should be disclosed. There was a clear understanding that the documents would be subjected to a declassification review, implying that the resulting disclosures will probably contain several redacted sections.