Supreme Court says NSA doesn’t have to say whether it has warrentless wiretapping records

Court: NSA doesn’t have to say if it has records

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court won’t make the super-secret National Security Agency divulge whether it has records of the warrantless wiretapping it did of lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay inmates.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from detainee lawyer Thomas B. Wilner.

Wilner and other detainee lawyers filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the NSA asking whether it has warrantless wiretapping records on them. But the NSA won’t say whether it does or does not, saying that revealing this information would endanger national security.

Federal courts have agreed with the NSA, saying that the FOIA does not require the divulgence of sensitive national security information.

The case is Wilner v. National Security Agency, 09-1192.

(This version CORRECTS APNewsNow. Corrects spelling of warrantless throughout.)