Washington Post – This judge just released 200 secret government surveillance requests
“U.S. District Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell, a former Senate aide who helped draft the Patriot Act, has defied easy labeling throughout a decades-long career spent charting the frontier of technology and law in the nation’s capital….In ordering the first-ever release by a full federal district court of a year’s worth of secret government surveillance requests, U.S. District Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell of Washington this week added to a decades-long career spent charting the frontier of technology and the law in the nation’s capital. Howell on Wednesday stepped into the fierce debate over the limits of secrecy and law enforcement searches in a digital age by releasing a list of more than 200 cases in which U.S. prosecutors in the District sought court orders for data about individuals’ phone, email…”