Since When Were the Quakers Terrorists?

[KCConservative]

I am all for the government listening in on Terrorists. I just think they need to follow the law and get FISA court orders within 72 hours of doing so. What is wrong with that?

I see nothing wrong with that unless time is crucial in finding and arresting the bad guys. But now we can't even do it with court orders, can we? The terrorists have been made aware of the surevellence. We can thank the New York Times for that bit of treason.

 

[ALiberalModerate]

I see nothing wrong with that unless time is crucial in finding and arresting the bad guys. But now we can't even do it with court orders, can we? The terrorists have been made aware of the surevellence. We can thank the New York Times for that bit of treason.

Do you not realize that under the FISA statute, you can start a wiretap before getting a court order, and you only have to get a court order within 72 hours of starting the wiretap, and only if the wiretap continues for more than 72 hours?

Do you honestly believe that the terrorist did not know that the United States was trying to intercept their communications?

 

[scottyz]

You cannot definitively state that either way. We don’t know whom the Bush Administration has been spying on because they have decided to forgo the Judicial Approval process in many cases. I doubt very seriously that they have not abused these court orders being that any time the government has been given a window into our private lives, that they have inevitably abused that power.

The only reason I can think of for Bush not getting the proper warrants is that he wanted to spy on people that weren't terrorists. The court has pretty much never turned them down.

 

[Gill]

The only reason I can think of for Bush not getting the proper warrants is that he wanted to spy on people that weren't terrorists. The court has pretty much never turned them down.

You're partially right. The FISA court turned very few requests down UNTIL 2001.

The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps has approved at least 18,740 applications for electronic surveillance or physical searches from five presidential administrations since 1979.

The judges modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications that were approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation. In 20 of the first 21 annual reports on the court's activities up to 1999, the Justice Department told Congress that "no orders were entered (by the FISA court) which modified or denied the requested authority" submitted by the government.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004, the most recent years for which public records are available.

The judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history.

Although the percentage is still quite small, this data shows that FISA suddenly became more stringent AFTER the 9/11 attacks. Other data suggests that the FISA court tried to throw up additional roadblocks such as opposing the dismantling of the "wall" imposed by Gorelick during the Clinton administration.