The EFF said in a press release yesterday:

The U.S. Department of Justice today filed a motion to dismiss its appeal of a ruling over legal opinions about Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the controversial provision of law relied on by the NSA to collect the call records of millions of Americans. As a result of the dismissal, the Justice Department will be forced to release a previously undisclosed opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) concerning access by law enforcement and intelligence agencies to census data under Section 215.

That’s good news. Census has historically been analyzed only in the aggregate, with individual records held by the United States Census Bureau for 72 years before public release. I’m interested in reading the OLC opinion when it’s finally released.