Document Summaries of DNI Releases

Unlike me, most of the readers on this site have jobs, families and other concerns that take up their time. As a result, reading through all of the very, very long court opinions and congressional reports declassified yesterday is outside of the time commitments available to most. Fortunately Lawfare has a very useful series of summaries on the documents.

The list is as follows:

• The list of documents released and links to download them.
• An introduction on the documents and background by Ben Wittes.
• An analysis and summary of the October 2011 FISC Opinion. (The one that’s showing up most in news stories)
• The follow-up opinion in November 2011, reviewing the changes made to NSA minimization procedures.
• The September 2012 opinion outlining additional NSA attempts to minimize incidental collection and review new procedures put in place.
• A summary and analysis of the document provided to Congress regarding the NSA programs and the FISC opinions. These show that Congress was given rather extensive information on the subject.

These tell a more complete picture of the chronology of the disclosures, rather than putting a particular commentary involving them like most sites are doing. It shows, in general, the way the FISC review and implementation process evolved during the period between 2011 to 2012.

Enjoy the read!