Secret surveillance courts in U.S. and Canada explained

U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday proposed ending the National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone data and forcing it get those records through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.

The FISA court is a secret forum in Washington D.C., where the U.S. government goes in order to conduct surveillance on foreign intelligence targets within the United States, says a lawyer for one of the few private groups to appear before the court.

Mark Rumold, a staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is fighting for more disclosure from the FISA court and talked to Brent Bambury, host of CBC Radio's Day 6 to explain what the court is all about.

Here in Canada, there's also a tradition of keeping our surveillance requests as quiet as possible.

The program talked to David Fraser, a privacy lawyer with the firm McInnes Cooper in Halifax, about the Canadian version of the FISA court.

To hear the interviews, click here.