SAN FRANCISCO—Two civil rights groups asked a judge on Nov. 28, to release documents describing a secret U.S. government effort to force Facebook Inc to decrypt voice conversations between users on its Messenger app.
A joint motion by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in U.S. District Court in Fresno, California argued that the public’s right to know the state of the law on encryption outweighs any reason the U.S. Justice Department might have for protecting a criminal probe or law-enforcement method.
