Although the success of its efforts remains to be seen, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is attempting to use the Freedom of Information Act to bring scrutiny to aspects of the federal government’s war on terror.

On Oct. 3, the foundation’s FLAG Project sued the Department of Justice after the Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to respond to FOIA requests for records relating to the FBI’s DCS-300 and Red Hook interception systems. The FBI uses the DCS-300 system to monitor and intercept communications over the Internet and the Red Hook system to collect data transmitted over telephone lines.

Just two weeks later, the FLAG Project sued the Justice Department again, this time seeking records concerning the FBI’s Investigative Data Warehouse, a large database that contains more than 560 million entries of personal information that can be accessed by law enforcement agents involved in anti-terrorism investigations.

The EFF’s approach in both cases was to sue after the FBI failed to respond to the FOIA requests within the 20 business days required by the act. However, the federal government — and particularly the FBI — rarely responds to FOIA requests within that time frame.

How these lawsuits are resolved therefore likely will say a great deal about both the enforceability of the act’s deadline and the FBI's ability to limit what is disclosed about its surveillance techniques.

Posted November 2006