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.