In a lawsuit filed on May 19, the Electronic Frontier Foundation alleges that the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Council is in violation of federal open-records laws. The Department of Justice refuses to release its legal opinion that allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation to obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without taking formal legal steps. Both the FBI and DoJ will not comment on the legal opinion and the DoJ claims that it cannot release the memorandum for national security reasons. Senior counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, David Sobel said that “The public has a right to know the government’s reasons for engaging in a questionable, invasive practice.”
Continuing the theme of whistleblowers from last week’s story of National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved a new set of rules for Wall Street whistleblowers. The rewards for financial whistleblowers are significant under the new rules. Whistleblowers would be entitled to 10 to 30 percent of the money that the SEC collects from enforcement actions. Corporations and business groups lobbied against the new rules particularly the lack of an amendment that would require whistleblowers to inform the companies they are accusing before reporting to the SEC.
Forty years ago, Daniel Ellsberg leaked a classified document on the Vietnam War to the New York Times that would become known as the Pentagon Papers. Next month, the government will be releasing the document in its entirety – with the exception of eleven words on one page that remain classified. Archivist of the United States David Ferriero suggested that readers could play a game of “Mad Libs” with the offending page. (more…)
