On October 17, 2007, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed this lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiff sued the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 5 U.S.C. § 552. The plaintiff, represented by in-house counsel, asked the court for a preliminary injunction for expedited release of the information sought. The plaintiff claimed that FOIA entitled it to expedited release of requested documents.

Specifically, the plaintiff requested documents relating to communications between ODNI and telecommunications companies or staff of members of the Senate or the House of Representatives related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) amendments. It also claimed that defendant did not properly expedite the documents as would be proper and had also failed to process the request under the standard deadline.

On November 27, 2007, Susan Illston found that ODNI failed to show any evidence of extraordinary circumstances. As such, the court ordered ODNI to provide an initial release to plaintiff's FOIA request by November 30, 2007, as well as release all non-exempt documents by December 10, 2007. The court also ordered the defendant to release an affidavit with the reasoning for withholding any documents it did not release.

On June 4, 2008, the court granted plaintiff $52,271.97 for costs and attorneys' fees. The court found that plaintiff's rates were reasonable but its hours were too high when calculating the requested $68,205.00 award amount.

David Smellie - 09/30/2016


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