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<div class="node-header"> <span class="submitted">[Not even a token
denial... for plausibility...]<br>
<br>
Published on Friday, May 3, 2013 by <a
href="http://www.commondreams.org">Common Dreams</a> </span>
<div class="node-title">
<h2 class="title">1,856 to Zero: Secret Spy Court Authorizes
100% of US Government Requests</h2>
</div>
<h3 class="subtitle">In court where civilians have no
representative, government's "national security" claims win
again and again</h3>
<div class="author"> - Lauren McCauley, staff writer </div>
</div>
<div class="node-content clear-block prose">
<div id="node-body">
<p>A secret federal court last year did not deny a single
request to search or electronically spy on people within the
United States "for foreign intelligence purposes," according
to a Justice Department report this week.</p>
<p><span class="image-right" style="width: 275px;"> <span
class="caption">(Photo: byungkyupark/ Flickr) </span></span>The
<a
href="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2013/05/fisacases.pdf"
target="_blank">report (pdf)</a>, which was released Tuesday
to Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), states that
during 2012, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (the
“FISC”) approved every single one of the 1,856 applications
made by the government for authority to conduct electronic
surveillance and/or physical searches for foreign intelligence
purposes.</p>
<p>This past year saw 5 percent more applications than 2011,
though no requests were denied in either. Besides the numbers
provided, no other information regarding the court and the
court's decisions are made public.</p>
<p>As <em>Wired's</em> David Kravets <a
href="http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/spy-court-stats/"
target="_blank">explains:</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>The secret court, which came to life in the wake of the
Watergate scandal under the President Richard M. Nixon
administration, now gets the bulk of its authority under the
FISA Amendments Act, which Congress reauthorized for another
five years days before it would have expired last year.</p>
<p>The act allows the government to electronically eavesdrop
on Americans’ phone calls and e-mails without a
probable-cause warrant so long as one of the parties to the
communication is believed outside the United States.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Previous to its <a
href="https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/12/28">2012
reauthorization</a>, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said during
a debate on amending the FISA Act, "The public has absolutely
no idea what the court is actually saying. What it means is
the country is in fact developing a secret body of law so
Americans have no way of finding out how their laws and
Constitution are being interpreted."</p>
<p>Putting the FISC in context, Kevin Gosztola at <em>FireDogLake</em>
<a
href="http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/05/02/surveillance-state-unchecked-secret-spy-court-rejected-zero-requests-in-2012/"
target="_blank">writes</a>, "America has a court that
reviews surveillance requests in secret and makes rulings in
secret that are kept secret." </p>
<p>He goes on to cite a 2008 Harvard Law Review, which critiqued
the unique arrangement of the secret court system, to explain
why the court's 100 percent acceptance rate may be
unsurprising:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One of the most striking elements of the FISA system is the
total absence of adversariality.</p>
<p>[t]he judge is forced not only to act as an arm of the
prosecution in weighing the prosecution’s arguments about
whether disclosure would or would not compromise national
security, but also to act as a defense lawyer in determining
whether the information is useful to the defendant.”
Similarly, in reviewing a FISA application, the FISC must
attempt the difficult, if not impossible, task of
simultaneously occupying the roles of advocate and neutral
arbiter — all without the authority or ability to
investigate facts or the time to conduct legal research. <strong>The
judge lacks, a skeptical advocate to vet the government’s
legal arguments, which is of crucial significance when the
government is always able to claim the weight of national
security expertise for its position. </strong>It is
questionable whether courts can play this role effectively,
and, more importantly, whether they should. [emphasis added]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Justice Department report also noted that the government
issued 15,229 National Security Letters last year. The
letters, issued by the FBI compelling "internet service
providers, credit companies, financial institutions and others
to hand over confidential records about their customers," were
declared unconstitutional in March. However, the decision was
stayed 90 days pending the White House's expected appeal.</p>
<p align="center">_____________________</p>
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