As of now the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has stalled its efforts since it has interpreted the law to its favour.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, wants to know from an authoritative source whether U.S. officials have ever forced a company to decrypt data so as to aid an investigation.

In order to do so, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued the Department of Justice to force it to reveal whether it has ever used the services of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to compel companies to decrypt information.

It tried to get an answer to this question earlier by using a standard Freedom of Information Act request which provided zilch.

The FISC says that whatever “potentially responsive” documents it found are exempt from disclosures since they were created before the USA Freedom Act took effect.

The EFF is of the opinion that the government is purposefully interpreting the law to its favour. The way the EFF views the Freedom Act is that it requires the declassification of all “significant” FISC orders, irrespective of when they were created. As per the EFF, It is just a matter of obeying the law.

If the EFF manages to persuade the government to subscribe to its point of view, it could shed some light on how seriously the government is pursuing its case of inserting backdoors and breaking encryption.

Although the White House has gone on record and has stated it will not support laws that mandate government access to devices, this obviously does not necessarily mean that the government has not been given such access on a case-by-case basis.

Although it’s just about anybody’s guess whether the EFF will find success in this endeavor, however if they do, consumers and U.S. citizens will get to know how the governments views and respects their privacy and security.