General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Snowden saw what I saw: surveillance criminally subverting the constitution Thomas Drake [View all]ljm2002
(10,751 posts)...but then I wasn't trying to make the case that we have become a police state. You introduced that notion into our exchange, not me.
While I am sure that the investigators don't want their requests rejected, that does not negate the fact that these requests are routinely approved. 11 rejected out of 35000+, that is pretty much the definition of a rubber stamp operation, regardless of whether you think the raw numbers are low or not.
As to your side note, an average number for this data makes little sense, since the number is (pretty much) monotonically increasing, up to 1856 in 2012 vs. 199 in its first year of operation. I'd say that's a fairly significant increase (without making any inferences about the merits), i.e. a 900% increase over that period of time.