Spy court report shows no barrier to surveillance

Monday, May 5, 2008

Our view: A FISA court that approves nearly every warrant to eavesdrop does no harm to national security.
The Bush administration has been asserting the right to wiretap without seeking a warrant from a special court set up for that purpose under the 30-year-old Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act.

However, a Justice Department report on the court's wiretap approvals suggests it is not the hurdle the administration made it out to be. Last year, the court approved 2,370 warrants seeking wiretaps of people in this country believed to be in contact with international terrorist organizations.


The court denied just three warrant applications and partially denied another; 86 times the court asked the government to amend its applications before granting approval. The year before, the court denied only one application and that just partially. This hardly sounds like an onerous approval process.

The suspicion here is that the Bush administration simply doesn't want any checks on its eavesdropping powers. And in seeking a rewrite of the surveillance law, the administration did in fact seek to greatly expand its powers to wiretap without warrants.

more:http://www.redding.com/news/2008/may/05/spy-court-report/