Electronic surveillance

Judge to Consider This Week Whether to Unseal Vast Surveillance Records

The highly publicized debate over whether a federal court could compel Apple to break the security features of the iPhone at the behest of the FBI was a rare moment in history. Most of the time, the public never has a clue when authorities come knocking to ask a company for help in accessing the digital communications of a criminal suspect.

But in August, we may learn more about whether the curtain of secrecy around past electronic surveillance in criminal investigations will be pulled back.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Kandis Westmore of the Northern District of California will hear from local prosecutors and two legal activists, Jennifer Granick of the American Civil Liberties Union and Riana Pfefferkorn of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, over whether she should set up a process to determine which cases are still validly sealed and those that can be opened.

Granick and Pfefferkorn petitioned the court to unseal cases in the Northern District—where Apple, Google and other giants of Silicon Valley are headquartered—in which technical assistance was sought by authorities between 2006 and 2011. Doing so would surely be a massive administrative undertaking. But the two argue that even if it’s hard to do, that doesn’t overcome the public’s right to know under the law.