Your Friday Afternoon FISC 215 Document Dump

Now available: a six-strong batch of historical materials regarding a telecommunications provider's January 2014 petition to vacate or modify an order issued pursuant to Section 215.   I've only thumbed through the documents, which include the provider's petition, the Justice Department's response, and four orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ("FISC"). On first blush, it looks like a phone company (we don't know which, thanks to redactions) subject to a 215 order had challenged the order early this year, before the FISC, on Fourth Amendment grounds.  The petitioner there essentially relied upon Judge Richard Leon's ruling, in the Klayman case, that the NSA's call bulk call records program ran contrary to the Fourth Amendment. The gist: in March, the FISC seemingly rejected the company's Fourth Amendment claim, but afterwards ordered the release of documents made available today---having in mind the declassification by the executive branch of details surrounding collection of telephony metadata.