About those FISA applications; Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court Orders 1979-2011
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) was established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. It was originally composed of seven district judges, from seven circuits, appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States to serve for a maximum of seven years. In 2001, the Patriot Act increased the number of judges on the Court to eleven, with three required to live within 20 miles of the District of Columbia. The Chief Justice appoints a Presiding Judge for the court from amongst these eleven judges.
FISA also created a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review to handle appeals from applications denied by FISC. This court is made up of three judges, also appointed by the Chief Justice, from U.S. district or appellate courts and serving for seven years.
The
FISC has jurisdiction to "hear applications for and grant orders approving electronic surveillance" and "physical search[es]" for the "purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information" on foreign nationals within the United States. Procedures at the FISC are secretive and are also widely considered to be non-adversarial, since the target of the order is not given an opportunity to appear at the hearing or informed of the presence of the order. However, the court rules of procedure do allow the electronic service providers to appear in order to challenge or modify any order. In addition, records from FISC hearings are not revealed even to those persons whom the government wishes to investigate, though the FISC may choose to publish its opinions, on its discretion.
At a FISC hearing, the government is not required to present evidence of the probable cause necessary for obtaining a search warrant or evidence of actual criminal activity. Rather,
under FISA, the government needs only to present evidence that the surveillance target is a foreign power or an agent of one.
epic.org
Okay, that part confuses me. Did NSA/DOJ claim American citizens are agents of foreign powers to obtain the PRISM and data collection warrants? Really? How is it possible that the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act an be used on American citizens anyway? :Headscratch:
Here's a chart of every FISA Court application/order issued for the years 1979-2011 - this is a LOT of secrecy in action.
http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html
And of those applications over these many years, the
FISA Court Has Rejected .03 Percent Of All Government Surveillance Requests.
Apparently the FISA court has rejected 11 of 34,000 applications since the court was created. 11 applications rejected. 0.3%
33,889 approved. 99.97%
Number of NSL Letters involving U.S. Citizens: 143,364
(Note: National Security Letters (NSLs) are extraordinary search procedures giving the FBI the power to compel the disclosure of customer records held by banks, telephone companies, Internet Service Providers, and others. In 2001, the FBIs authority to issue National Security Letters was significantly expanded by Section 505 of the Patriot Act, primarily by lowering the threshold in which NSLs may be issued.)
Number of U.S. Citizens involved in NSL Records: 53,593
Applications for Business and Tangible Records: 751
Anyone have any idea what percentage of these orders have resulted in terrorist arrests, or are they secret too?
I grew up in the 1960's, yeah, age of duck and cover and the KGB, the Iron Curtain and Stassi, the Eastern Bloc, Mao and Chinese oppression and the rise of right wing dictatorships within this hemisphere resulting in the "disappearing" of tens of thousands of people in Central and South America. How proud we were knowing we were Americans and free. Freedom from our government spying and collecting data on us as other governments did, free to speak out in protest, simply free to speak out, to work to change laws we found untenable.
Now we must be careful not to use certain words or phrases that may cause our detention.... shades of totalitarian regimes.
It seems to me that terrorism has won. Bin Laden succeeded. I'd love to be proven wrong.