Cato Urges Court to Release Section 702 Audits for Congressional Debate

On Thursday, the Cato Institute filed a motion in federal court that would compel the Department of Justice to release internal audits of the FISA Section 702 program.
 
The timing is critical. Cato senior fellow Patrick Eddington is asking the court to release these audits soon, by March 29 at the latest, so these audits can inform the Congressional debate on the reauthorization of FISA Section 702. That statute, which authorizes surveillance on foreign targets but has been used to justify millions of acts of domestic surveillance in recent years, must be reauthorized by April 19.
 
DOJ does release summaries of these audits, but they are terse and without much detail. The full texts of the internal DOJ audits remain secret from both the American people and their elected representatives. A long-standing Freedom of Information Act request for these records filed by Cato has languished since last June. Cato’s filing now communicates a sense of urgency to the court.
 
“American citizens and Congress have no way of comparing DOJ claims about alleged reductions in violations with what the original audits themselves reveal about those violations,” Eddington wrote on a Cato blog.
 
PPSA applauds Cato and Patrick Eddington for taking the initiative. We urge the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia to expedite the release of these audits in time to inform the debate – doing so out of respect for Congress and the American people.