Secret Court Shatters Record for Spying Warrants

The secret court responsible for giving the U.S. government the power to snoop on suspected terrorists (along with your friends and neighbors) issued an unprecedented number of domestic spy warrants in 2006. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court last year approved 2,176 warrants and rejected only one, according to information recently released by the Justice Department to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

FISC issued less than half as many warrants in 2000. Of course, that was before 9/11, so you'd expect the numbers to rise. But ratcheting up domestic spying has not come without consequences. Back in March, we learned that the FBI had for years bypassed FISC and been illegally spying on Americans without obtaining warrants. The FBI entered into contracts with telecoms to gain easy access to citizens' private information. Despite being asked repeatedly by Congressional committees to provide more information, the Justice Department is still unable to come up with any hard data on how many times the FBI went after phone, internet and banking records without court approval.

Now, the Bush administration is hoping to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to better address these problems. And how does the White House propose to do this? By making telecoms who cooperate with domestic spying operations immune from lawsuits. And by expanding the FBI's electronic dragnet powers to allow FISC to issue warrants to spy on people even when the connection to terrorism is "unclear."

The Christian Science Monitor has a nice run-downof the latest on the issue. We, however, would like to leave you with this jeremiad from Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in his statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee:

"[F]ar from 'modernizing' the law, [the White House's proposal] would gut the long-standing checks and balances that Congress established to rein in the Executive's ability to spy on Americans. It would shield surveillance conducted in the name of national security from meaningful judicial scrutiny, and unjustifiably provide blanket immunity for illegal surveillance conducted since September 11, 2001 -- surveillance that Congress has not yet even investigated, and which appears to go far beyond the narrow 'Terrorist Surveillance Program' admitted to by the President.

Unfortunately, this Administration has squandered the people's trust over the past five years, flagrantly ignoring FISA's requirements by wiretapping Americans without warrants and routinely abusing its authority under the USA PATRIOT Act to obtain Americans' private records. It can no longer be given the benefit of the doubt by Congress in these matters. When a large margin of Americans believe that the President has failed to properly balance the preservation of civil liberties against national security concerns, what is most needed is vigorous investigation and oversight by Congress and the Courts -- not a statutory blank check granting the Executive even greater surveillance authority, nor a pardon for government agents and telecommunications companies that have violated the law in the past. The Administration and the telephone companies must understand that they cannot ignore the statutes passed by Congress and then simply demand amnesty when caught in the act."

Photo: Sharon Terry