# Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-intelligence-surveillance-court/113013>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [June 8, 2002, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-intelligence-surveillance-court/113013 "2002-06-08T21:46:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2002, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-intelligence-surveillance-court/113013/1 "2002-06-08T21:46:17Z")

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Has anyone ever heard of this court?

[/quote]  
In a highly restricted room inside the Department of Justice Building in Washington D.C. resides a federal court that meets in complete secrecy. Even though the rulings this secret court issues may result in criminal charges, convictions and prison sentences for US citizens, their writs and rulings are permanently sealed from review by those accused of crimes and from any substantive civilian review. This is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which considers surveillance and physical search orders from the Department of Justice and US intelligence agencies. During the 20-year tenure of the FISC the court has received over 10,000 applications for covert surveillance and physical searches. To date, not a single application has been denied.  
[/quote]

[http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/fiscshort.html](http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/fiscshort.html)

It seems they have to answer to no one.

I don’t like the idea. Do you?

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**Author:** ![Violet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/ebca7d/32.png) [@Violet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Violet)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2002, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-intelligence-surveillance-court/113013/2 "2002-06-09T04:16:45Z")

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First, I’d like to give the link to the homepage of the author of that article: [http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/](http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/)

Then I’d like to point out something that seems omitted from that article:

> [@](#):
>
> Under FISA, surveillance is generally permitted based on a finding of probable cause that the surveillance target is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power

See [http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Terrorism\_militias/fisa\_faq.html](http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Terrorism_militias/fisa_faq.html)

I guess this is the danger:

> [@](#):
>
> FISA powers are broad and vague, and the secrecy of FISA proceedings makes FISA powers susceptible to abuse.

The lower courts found FISA constitutional (see above link ref.)