United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (or FISC) is a U.S. federal court authorized under . It was established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). The FISC oversees requests for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign intelligence agents inside the United States by federal police agencies (primarily the F.B.I.). The FISA and FISC were inspired by the recommendations of the Church Committee. p. 34

FISA warrant

Each application for one of these surveillance warrants (called a FISA warrant) is made before an individual judge of the court. Like a grand jury, FISC is not an adversarial court: the federal government is the only party to its proceedings. However, the court may allow third parties to submit briefs as amici curiae. If an application is denied by one judge of the FISC, the federal government is not allowed to make the same application to a different judge of the FISC. Instead, denials must be appealed to the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. Such appeals are rare: the first appeal from the FISC to the Court of Review was made in 2002, 24 years after the founding of the FISC.

It is also rare for FISA warrant requests to be turned down by the court. Through the end of 2004, 18,761 warrants were granted, while just five were rejected (many sources say four). Fewer than 200 requests had to be modified before being accepted, almost all of them in 2003 and 2004. The four known rejected requests were all from 2003, and all four were partially granted after being resubmitted for reconsideration by the government. Of the requests that had to be modified, few if any were before the year 2000. In subsequent years, according to journalist Joshua Micah Marshall, the breakdown was as follows:Here are some more details on the record of the FISA Court, Talking Points Memo, December 17 2005

Year	Modified requests
2000	1 request modified
2001	2 requests modified
2002	2 requests modified (both modifications later reversed)
2003	79 requests modified (out of 1724 granted)
2004	94 requests modified (out of 1758)

On May 17, 2002, the court rebuffed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, releasing an opinion that alleged that FBI and Justice Department officials had "supplied erroneous information to the court in more than 75 applications for search warrants and wiretaps, including one signed by then-FBI Director Louis J. Freeh".Secret Court Rebuffs Ashcroft: Justice Dept. Chided On Misinformation, Washington Post, August 23, 2002 page A01 Whether this rebuke is related to the court starting to require modification of drastically more requests in 2003 is unknown.

On December 16, 2005, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration had been conducting surveillance against U.S. citizens without the knowledge of the FISC since 2002.Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts, New York Times, December 16 2005 - mirror On December 20, 2005, Judge James Robertson resigned his position with the FISC, apparently in protest of the secret surveillance.Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest: Jurist Concerned Bush Order Tainted Work of Secret Panel, Washington Post, December 21 2005 The government's apparent circumvention of the FISC may also be related to the increase in court-ordered modifications to warrant requests.

Closed hearings and classified proceedings

Because of the sensitive nature of its business, the FISC is a "secret court": its hearings are closed to the public, and, while records of the proceedings are kept, those records are also not available to the public. (Copies of those records with classified information redacted can and have been made public.) Due to the classified nature of its proceedings, only government attorneys are usually permitted to appear before the FISC. Due to the nature of the matters heard before it, FISC hearings may need to take place at any time of day or night, weekdays or weekends; thus, at least one judge must be "on call" at all times to hear evidence and decide whether or not to issue a warrant.

Composition

When the court was founded, it was composed of seven federal district judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States, each serving a seven year term, with one judge being appointed each year. In 2001, the USA PATRIOT Act expanded the court from seven to eleven judges, and required that at least three of the judges of the court be from within twenty miles of the District of Columbia. No judge may be appointed to this court more than once, and no judge may be appointed to both the Court of Review and the FISC.

Current membership

Judge	Judicial district	Date appointed	Term expiry
Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (presiding)	District of Columbia	May 19, 2002	May 18, 2009
Dee Benson	District of Utah	May 2004	May 2011
Robert C. Broomfield	District of Arizona	October 1, 2002	May 18, 2009
James G. Carr	Northern District of Ohio	May 19, 2002	May 18, 2008
John E. Conway	District of New Mexico	May 19, 2002	May 18, 2007
Michael J. Davis	District of Minnesota	May 18, 1999	May 18, 2006
Nathaniel M. Gorton	District of Massachusetts	May 18, 2001	May 18, 2008
Claude M. Hilton	Eastern District of Virginia	May 18, 2001	May 18, 2007
Malcolm Howard	Eastern District of North Carolina	2005	2012
George P. Kazen	Southern District of Texas	May 18, 2003	May 18, 2010
John D. Bates	District of Columbia	February, 2006	May, 2013 ?

Former membership

Judge	Judicial District	Date Appointed	Term Expiry
James Robertson	District of Columbia	May 19, 2002	May 18, 2006 (resigned December 20, 2005)
Harold A. Baker	Central District of Illinois		2005
Stanley S. Brotman	District of New Jersey		2004
William H. Stafford Jr.	Northern District of Florida		2003
Royce C. Lambeth	District of Columbia		2002
John F. Keenan	Southern District of New York		2001

Notes

References

"Big Brother is Listening" by James Bamford, Atlantic Monthly, April 2006.
FISA orders 1979-2004

External links

Rules of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

Judicial branch of the United States government | Privacy of telecommunications