The Center for Constitutional Rights petitioned the Supreme Court last week to reverse or change its ruling in Clapper v. Amnesty International, the rationale from which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had used to reject the center’s concerns about government surveillance in a separate case, Center for Constitutional Rights v. Obama (http://bit.ly/1a6JsMW). “We have always been confident that our communications -- including privileged attorney-client phone calls -- were being unlawfully monitored by the NSA, but Edward Snowden’s revelations of a massive, indiscriminate NSA spying program changes the picture,” Senior Attorney Shayana Kadidal said in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1lFpJ8Q). “Federal courts have dismissed surveillance cases, including ours, based on criteria established before Snowden’s documents proved that such concerns are obviously well-founded.” The center considers U.S. surveillance practices unconstitutional, it said. “Eight years after the initial disclosures that spawned this litigation, the seeming futility of attempts to debate the legality of broad surveillance in the courts has led to that debate being removed to the only remaining open forum available -- the press -- through the intervention of whistleblowers,” the attorneys said in the 108-page filing for a writ of certiorari. “The current vitality of that debate demonstrates the exceptional importance of the questions before this Court.”

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court signed off yet again on the government’s phone surveillance program, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Friday in a news release (http://1.usa.gov/1dhDnug). “Consistent with his prior declassification decisions and in light of the significant and continuing public interest in the telephony metadata collection program, [Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper has decided to declassify and disclose publicly that the government filed an application with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court seeking renewal of the authority to collect telephony metadata in bulk, and that the court renewed that authority on January 3, 2014,” a spokesman for the government wrote. The spokesman said the office believes the bulk collection of phone metadata is lawful. “Nevertheless, the Intelligence Community continues to be open to modifications to this program that would provide additional privacy and civil liberty protections while still maintaining its operational benefits,” the spokesman said. “To that end, the Administration is carefully evaluating the recommendation of the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies regarding transitioning the program to one in which the data is held by telecommunications companies or a third party.” The latest FISC order authorizing the program is undergoing declassification review now, the office said.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will participate in an Oakland, Calif., town hall discussion with local community members Jan. 9, said Free Press in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1arsy8c). The event, “A Town Hall on Our Right to Communicate,” is hosted by Voices for Internet Freedom with partners Free Press, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, the Center for Media Justice, and ColorOfChange. “This is a chance to tell Wheeler face to face about the kind of media system that best meets our needs -- and to advocate for the health and well-being of our families and our communities,” said the release. Along with Wheeler, the event will feature Center for Media Justice Executive Director Malkia Cyril, National Hispanic Media Coalition Executive Vice President Jessica Gonzalez, California Public Utilities Commissioner Catherine J.K. Sandoval and others. The town hall will be at Preservation Park, Nile Hall, 1233 Preservation Park Way from 7 to 9 p.m.

The American Civil Liberties Union appealed the recent federal court decision upholding the legality of government phone surveillance in ACLU v. Clapper, as the group said it would do Dec. 27 when the ruling came down. The ACLU filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. District Court in New York Thursday (http://bit.ly/1bCrj5N). “We believe that the NSA’s call-tracking program violates both statutory law and the Constitution,” said ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer in a news release (http://bit.ly/1g3VeYV). The group anticipates that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “will set an expedited briefing schedule and that it will hear oral argument in the spring,” it said.

The U.S. government reversed course on whether to disclose a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion interpreting the authorities of Patriot Act Section 215 phone surveillance. The government has debated this opinion, issued in docket BR 13-25 on Feb. 19, before the FISC for months now. In October, the FISC ordered the government to release a timetable for making public a redacted version. The government resisted in November, saying it wanted to withhold the opinion in full. Compelled to explain, the government did so in a December filing before the FISC, released Monday (http://1.usa.gov/1gjSuHI). The opinion is classified and involves ongoing FBI law enforcement investigation of one person in a counterterrorism case, and hence is “protected by the law enforcement investigatory privilege,” the government said. But “upon review and as a discretionary matter,” the government is now fine with the FISC moving forward with publishing a redacted version of the opinion that omits classified information and doesn’t threaten the ongoing investigation, it said. It provided proposed redactions.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit to compel the government to disclose more information about executive order 12333, which authorizes surveillance activities. The ACLU filed its suit Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (http://bit.ly/1isjo3t). The executive order, signed in 1981, authorizes government surveillance activities outside of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The ACLU said knowledge of how the surveillance transpires is “of great public significance and concern” and criticized the limited information available. It filed Freedom of Information Act requests of agencies earlier this year but hasn’t received sufficient response, it said. Violations of the executive order on surveillance are not reported to Congress, as FISA surveillance violations are, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., told us last week (CD Dec 30 p4). A member of Intelligence Committee, Himes introduced a bill in mid-December that would change that.