United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

"FISC" redirects here. For other uses, see Fisc (disambiguation).
United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
(FISC)
Established 1978
Judges assigned 11
Chief judge Thomas F. Hogan
Official site

The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, also called the FISA Court) is a U.S. federal court established and authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Such requests are made most often by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Congress created FISA and its court as a result of the recommendations by the U.S. Senate's Church Committee.[1] Its powers have evolved and expanded to the point that it has been called "almost a parallel Supreme Court."[2]

Since 2009, the court has been relocated to the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, D.C.[3][4] For roughly thirty years of its history (prior to 2009), it was housed on the sixth floor of the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building.[3][4]

In 2013 a top-secret order issued by the court, later leaked to the media via journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill from documents culled by Edward Snowden, required a subsidiary of Verizon to provide a daily, on-going feed of all call detail records – including those for domestic calls – to the NSA.

FISA warrants

Each application for one of these surveillance warrants (called a FISA warrant) is made before an individual judge of the court. The court may allow third parties to submit briefs as amici curiae. When the U.S. Attorney General determines that an emergency exists, he may authorize the emergency employment of electronic surveillance before obtaining the necessary authorization from the FISC, if the Attorney General or his designee notifies a judge of the court at the time of authorization and applies for a warrant as soon as practicable but not more than 7 days after authorization of such surveillance, as required by 50 U.S.C. § 1805.

If an application is denied by one judge of the court, the federal government is not allowed to make the same application to a different judge of the court, but may appeal 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 (In re Sealed Case No. 02-001), 24 years after the founding of the court.

Also rare is for FISA warrant requests to be turned down. During the 25 years from 1979 to 2004, 18,742 warrants were granted, while only 4 were rejected. Fewer than 200 requests had to be modified before being accepted, almost all of them in 2003 and 2004. The four rejected requests were all from 2003, and all four were partially granted after being submitted for reconsideration by the government. Of the requests that had to be modified, few were before the year 2000. During the next eight years, from 2004 to 2012, there were over 15,100 additional warrants granted, and another 7 being rejected. Over the entire 33-year period, the FISA court granted 33,942 warrants, with only 11 denials – a rejection rate of 0.03 percent of the total requests.[5] This does not include the number of warrants that were modified by the FISA court. This can cause a phenomenon called "confirmation bias" which, due to such a high approval rate of warrants, can lead to over rationalization of information by the government on targeted individuals. For example, certain characteristics like ethnicity and religion combined with probable can cause the FBI to dig into the background of an individual until anything remotely suspicious comes up, even if there's clear-cut evidence that the person is innocent.[6]

FISA warrant requests for electronic surveillance[lower-alpha 1][7]
Year # Requests
Submitted 		# Requests
Approved 		# Requests
Modified		 # Requests
Denied
1979 [8] 199 207 00
1980 319 322 10
1981 431 433 00
1982 473 475 00
1983 549 549 00
1984 63563500
198558758700
198657357300
198751251200
198853453400
198954654600
199059559500
199159359300
199248448400
199350950900
199457657600
199569769700
199683983900
199774974800
199879679600
199988688000
2000 1,005 1,012 1 0
2001 932 934 4 0
2002 1,228 1,228  2  0 [lower-alpha 2] 0
2003 1,727 1,724 79 4 [lower-alpha 3]
2004 1,758 1,754 94 0
2005 2,074 2,072 61 0
2006 2,181 2,176 73 1
2007 2,371 2,370 86 4
2008 2,082 2,083 2 1
2009 1,329 1,320 14 2
2010 1,511 1,506 14 0
2011 1,676 1,674 30 0
2012 1,789 1,788 40 0
2013 1,588 1,588 34 0
TOTALS 35,529 35,434 533 12
Notes
  1. ↑ Excludes physical searches
  2. ↑ Two modifications that were later reversed by the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, in a case entitled In re Sealed Case No. 02-001.
  3. ↑ All four were later partially granted, after being submitted for reconsideration by the government.

On May 17, 2002, the court rebuffed Attorney General John Ashcroft, releasing an opinion that alleged that the 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 FBI Director Louis J. Freeh."[9] Whether this rejection was related to the court starting to require modification of significantly 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 court since 2002.[10] On December 20, 2005, Judge James Robertson resigned his position with the court, apparently in protest of the secret surveillance,[11] and later, in the wake of the Snowden leaks of 2013, criticized the court-sanctioned expansion of the scope of government surveillance and its being allowed to craft a secret body of law.[12] The government's apparent circumvention of the court started prior to the increase in court-ordered modifications to warrant requests.

In 2011, the Obama Administration secretly won permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases. The searches take place under a surveillance program Congress authorized in 2008 under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under that law, the target must be a foreigner “reasonably believed” to be outside the United States, and the court must approve the targeting procedures in an order good for one year. But a warrant for each target would thus no longer be required. That means that communications with Americans could be picked up without a court first determining that there is probable cause that the people they were talking to were terrorists, spies or “foreign powers.” The FISC also extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years with an extension possible for foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purposes. Both measures were done without public debate or any specific authority from Congress.[13]

Secrecy

Because of the sensitive nature of its business, the court is a "secret court" – its hearings are closed to the public. While records of the proceedings are kept, they also are unavailable to the public, although copies of some records with classified information redacted have been made public. Due to the classified nature of its proceedings, usually only attorneys licensed to practice in front of the US government are permitted to appear before the court. Because of the nature of the matters heard before it, court 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.

A heavily redacted version of an 2008 appeal by Yahoo![14] of an order issued with respect to NSA's PRISM program had been published for the edification of other potential appellants. The identity of the appellant was declassified in June 2013.[15]

Criticism

There has been growing criticism of the court since the September 11, 2001 attacks. This is partly because the court sits ex parte – in other words, in the absence of anyone but the judge and the government present at the hearings.[4] This, combined with the minimal number of requests that are rejected by the court has led experts to characterize it as a rubber stamp (former National Security Agency analyst Russ Tice called it a "kangaroo court with a rubber stamp").[16] The accusation of being a "rubber stamp" was rejected by FISA Court president Reggie B. Walton who wrote in a letter to Senator Patrick J. Leahy: "The annual statistics provided to Congress by the Attorney General [...] - frequently cited to in press reports as a suggestion that the Court's approval rate of application is over 99% - reflect only the number of final applications submitted to and acted on by the Court. These statistics do not reflect the fact that many applications are altered to prior or final submission or even withheld from final submission entirely, often after an indication that a judge would not approve them."[17] He added: "There is a rigorous review process of applications submitted by the executive branch, spearheaded initially by five judicial branch lawyers who are national security experts and then by the judges, to ensure that the court’s authorizations comport with what the applicable statutes authorize."[18] In a follow letter Walton stated that the government had revamped 24.4% of its requests in the face of court questions and demands in time from July 1, 2013 to September 30, 2013.[19][20][21] This figure became available after Walton decided in the summer of 2013 that the FISC would begin keeping its own tally of how Justice Department warrant applications for electronic surveillance fared — and would track for the first time when the government withdrew or resubmitted those applications with changes.[21] Some requests are modified by the court but ultimately granted, while the percentage of denied requests is statistically negligible (11 denied requests out of around 34,000 granted in 35 years – equivalent to 0.03 percent).[7][16][22][23] The accusation that the FISC is a "rubber stamp" court was also rejected by Robert S. Litt (General Counsel of Office of the Director of National Intelligence): "When [the Government] prepares an application for [a section 215 order, it] first submit[s] to the [FISC] what's called a "read copy," which the court staff will review and comment on. [A]nd they will almost invariably come back with questions, concerns, problems that they see. And there is an iterative process back and forth between the Government and the [FISC] to take care of those concerns so that at the end of the day, we're confident that we're presenting something that the [FISC] will approve. That is hardly a rubber stamp. It's rather extensive and serious judicial oversight of this process."[24]

A 2003 Senate Judiciary Committee Interim Report on FBI Oversight in the 107th Congress by the Senate Judiciary Committee: FISA Implementation Failures, cited the "unnecessary secrecy" of the court among its "most important conclusions":

"The secrecy of individual FISA cases is certainly necessary, but this secrecy has been extended to the most basic legal and procedural aspects of the FISA, which should not be secret. This unnecessary secrecy contributed to the deficiencies that have hamstrung the implementation of the FISA. Much more information, including all unclassified opinions and operating rules of the FISA Court and Court of Review, should be made public and/or provided to the Congress."[25]

Allegations of bias

In a July 2013 interview, Senator and privacy advocate Ron Wyden described the FISC warrant process as "the most one-sided legal process in the United States". "I don't know of any other legal system or court that really doesn't highlight anything except one point of view", he said. Later in the interview he said Congress should seek to "diversify some of the thinking on the court".[26]

Elizabeth Gotein, a co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, has criticized the court as being too compromised to be an impartial tribunal that oversees the work of the NSA and other U.S. intelligence activities. Since the court meets in secret, hears only the arguments of the government prior to deciding a case, and its rulings cannot be appealed or even reviewed by the public, she has argued that: "Like any other group that meets in secret behind closed doors with only one constituency appearing before them, they're subject to capture and bias." [27]

A related bias of the court results from what critics such as Julian Sanchez, a scholar at the Cato Institute, have described as the near certainty of the polarization or group think of the judges of the court. Since all of the judges are appointed by the same person (the Chief Justice of the United States), as of 2013 nearly all currently serving judges are of the same political party (the Republican Party), hear no opposing testimony and feel no pressure from colleagues or the public to moderate their rulings, group polarization is almost a certainty. "There's the real possibility that these judges become more extreme over time, even when they had only a mild bias to begin with", Sanchez said.[27]

Appointment process

The court's judges[28] are appointed solely by the Chief Justice of the United States without confirmation or oversight by the U.S. Congress.[29] This gives the chief justice the ability to appoint like-minded judges and create a court without diversity.[30][31] "The judges are hand-picked by someone who, through his votes on the Supreme Court, we have come to learn has a particular view on civil liberties and law enforcement", Theodore Ruger, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said with respect to Chief Justice John G. Roberts. "The way the FISA is set up, it gives him unchecked authority to put judges on the court who feel the same way he does."[29] And Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University's Washington College of Law, added, "Since FISA was enacted in 1978, we've had three chief justices, and they have all been conservative Republicans, so I think one can worry that there is insufficient diversity".[32]

There are some reform proposals. Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut proposed that each of the chief judges of the 12 major appeals courts select a district judge for the surveillance court; the chief justice would still pick the review panel that hears rare appeals of the court's decisions, but six other Supreme Court justices would have to sign off. Another proposal authored by Representative Adam Schiff of California would give the president the power to nominate judges for the court, subject to Senate approval, while Representative Steve Cohen proposed that Congressional leaders pick eight of the court's members.[33]

Judicial and public oversight

Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the American University's Washington College of Law, has argued that, without having to seek the approval of the court (which he has said merely reviews certifications to ensure that they – and not the surveillance itself – comply with the various statutory requirements), the U.S. Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence can engage in sweeping programmatic surveillance for one year at a time.[34] There are procedures used by the NSA to target non-U.S. persons[35] and procedures used by the NSA to minimize data collection from U.S. persons.[36] These court-approved policies allow the NSA to:[37][38]

Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director, said in light of revelations that the government secured telephone records from Verizon and Internet data from some of the largest providers that safeguards that are supposed to be protecting individual privacy are not working.[18] Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that when courts make mistakes, the losing party has the right to appeal and the erroneous decision is reversed. “That process cannot happen when a secret court considers a case with only one party before it.”[18]

According to The Guardian, "The broad scope of the court orders, and the nature of the procedures set out in the documents, appear to clash with assurances from President Obama and senior intelligence officials that the NSA could not access Americans' call or email information without warrants".[37] Glenn Greenwald, who published details of the PRISM surveillance program, explained:

that this entire process is a fig leaf, "oversight" in name only. It offers no real safeguards. That's because no court monitors what the NSA is actually doing when it claims to comply with the court-approved procedures. Once the Fisa court puts its approval stamp on the NSA's procedures, there is no external judicial check on which targets end up being selected by the NSA analysts for eavesdropping. The only time individualized warrants are required is when the NSA is specifically targeting a US citizen or the communications are purely domestic. When it is time for the NSA to obtain Fisa court approval, the agency does not tell the court whose calls and emails it intends to intercept. It instead merely provides the general guidelines which it claims are used by its analysts to determine which individuals they can target, and the Fisa court judge then issues a simple order approving those guidelines. The court endorses a one-paragraph form order stating that the NSA's process "'contains all the required elements' and that the revised NSA, FBI and CIA minimization procedures submitted with the amendment 'are consistent with the requirements of [50 U.S.C. §1881a(e)] and with the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States'". As but one typical example, The Guardian has obtained an August 19, 2010, Fisa court approval from Judge John D. Bates which does nothing more than recite the statutory language in approving the NSA's guidelines.

Once the NSA has this court approval, it can then target anyone chosen by their analysts, and can even order telecoms and internet companies to turn over to them the emails, chats and calls of those they target. The Fisa court plays no role whatsoever in reviewing whether the procedures it approved are actually complied with when the NSA starts eavesdropping on calls and reading people's emails. The guidelines submitted by the NSA to the Fisa court demonstrate how much discretion the agency has in choosing who will be targeted. [...] The only oversight for monitoring whether there is abuse comes from the executive branch itself: from the DOJ and Director of National Intelligence, which conduct "periodic reviews … to evaluate the implementation of the procedure." At a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday afternoon, deputy attorney general James Cole testified that every 30 days, the Fisa court is merely given an "aggregate number" of database searches on US domestic phone records. [...] The decisions about who has their emails and telephone calls intercepted by the NSA is made by the NSA itself, not by the Fisa court, except where the NSA itself concludes the person is a US citizen and/or the communication is exclusively domestic. But even in such cases, the NSA often ends up intercepting those communications of Americans without individualized warrants, and all of this is left to the discretion of the NSA analysts with no real judicial oversight.[39]

Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole and NSA Deputy Director John C. Inglis cited the court's oversight in defending the constitutionality of the NSA's surveillance activities before during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in July 2013. Representative Jerrold Nadler, challenged Cole's defense of the program's constitutionality, and he said the secrecy in which the court functioned negated the validity of its review. "The fact that a secret court unaccountable to public knowledge of what it's doing ... may join you in misusing or abusing the statutes is of no comfort whatsoever", Nadler said.[40] Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University, said the secrecy that comes along with national security makes it difficult to evaluate how the administration carries out the wide authority Congress has given it. “FISA court judges hear all of this and they think it’s legal,” Kerr said. “What we really don’t know, though, are what the FISA court’s opinions say.”[18]

Secret law

In July 2013, The New York Times published disclosures from anonymous government whistleblowers of secret law written by the court holding that vast collections of data on all Americans (even those not connected in any way to foreign enemies) amassed by the NSA do not violate the warrant requirements of Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It reported that anyone suspected of being involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage or cyber-attacks, according to the court, may be considered a legitimate target for warrantless surveillance. Acting like a parallel U.S. Supreme Court, the court greatly broadened the "special-needs" exception to do so.[2]

The newspaper reported that in "more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation's surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans".[2][lower-alpha 1] It also wrote, with respect to the court:

In one of the court's most important decisions, the judges have expanded the use in terrorism cases of a legal principle known as the 'special needs' doctrine and carved out an exception to the Fourth Amendment's requirement of a warrant for searches and seizures [...]. The special needs doctrine was originally established in 1989 by the Supreme Court in a ruling allowing the drug testing of railway workers, finding that a minimal intrusion on privacy was justified by the government's need to combat an overriding public danger. Applying that concept more broadly, the FISA judges have ruled that the N.S.A.'s collection and examination of Americans' communications data to track possible terrorists does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, the officials said. That legal interpretation is significant, several outside legal experts said, because it uses a relatively narrow area of the law – used to justify airport screenings, for instance, or drunken-driving checkpoints – and applies it much more broadly, in secret, to the wholesale collection of communications in pursuit of terrorism suspects.[2]

The "special-needs" doctrine is an exemption to the Fourth Amendment's Warrants Clause which commands that "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be and seized". The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized an exemption to the Warrants Clause "outside the foreign intelligence context, in so-called "special-needs" cases. In those cases, the Court excused compliance with the Warrant Clause when the purpose behind the governmental action went beyond routine law enforcement and insisting upon a warrant would materially interfere with the accomplishment of that purpose. See, Vernonia Sch. Dist. 4 7J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 653 (1995) (upholding drug testing of highschool athletes and explaining that the exception to the warrant requirement applied "when special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement [s] impracticablen (quoting Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 873 (1987))); Skinner v. Ry. Labor Execs. Ass'n, 489 U.S . 602, 620 (1989) (upholding regulations instituting drug and alcohol testing of railroad workers for safety reasons); cf. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S . 1, 23-24 (1968) (upholding pat-frisk for weapons to protect officer safety during investigatory stop)".[41] The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review concluded on August 22, 2008, in the case In re Directives [redacted text] Pursuant to Section 105B of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that the "special-needs" doctrine applied by analogy to justify a foreign intelligence exception to the warrant requirement for surveillance undertaken for national security purposes and directed at a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.[41][42][43][44]

James Robertson – a former judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who, in 2004, ruled against the Bush administration in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, and also served on the FISC for three years between 2002 and 2005 – said he was "frankly stunned" by the newspaper's report that court rulings had created a new body of law broadening the ability of the NSA to use its surveillance programs to target not only terrorists but suspects in cases involving espionage, cyberattacks and weapons of mass destruction.[45] Geoffrey R. Stone, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago, said he was troubled by the idea that the court is creating a significant body of law without hearing from anyone outside the government, forgoing the adversarial system that is a staple of the American justice system. He said, "That whole notion is missing in this process".[2]

The court concluded that mass collection of telephone metadata (including the time of phone calls and numbers dialed) does not violate the Fourth Amendment as long as the government establishes a valid reason under national security regulations before taking the next step of actually examining the contents of an American's communications. This concept is rooted partly in the special needs doctrine. "The basic idea is that it's O.K. to create this huge pond of data", an unnamed U.S. official said, "but you have to establish a reason to stick your pole in the water and start fishing".[2] Under the new procedures passed by the U.S. Congress in the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, even the collection of metadata must be considered "relevant" to a terrorism investigation or other intelligence activities. The court has indicated that while individual pieces of data may not appear "relevant" to a terrorism investigation, the total picture that the bits of data create may in fact be relevant, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the decisions.[2]

A secret ruling made by the court redefined the single word "relevant" enabled the NSA to gather phone data on millions of Americans. In classified orders starting in the mid-2000s, the court accepted that "relevant" could be broadened to permit an entire database of records on millions of people, in contrast to a more conservative interpretation widely applied in criminal cases, in which only some of those records would likely be allowed.[46] Under the Patriot Act, the Federal Bureau of Investigation can require businesses to hand over "tangible things", including "records", as long as the FBI shows it is reasonable to believe the things are "relevant to an authorized investigation" into international terrorism or foreign intelligence activities. The history of the word "relevant" is key to understanding that passage. The Supreme Court in 1991 said things are "relevant" if there is a "reasonable possibility" that they will produce information related to the subject of the investigation. In criminal cases, courts previously have found that very large sets of information did not meet the relevance standard because significant portions – innocent people's information – would not be pertinent. But the court has developed separate precedents, centered on the idea that investigations to prevent national-security threats are different from ordinary criminal cases. The court's rulings on such matters are classified and almost impossible to challenge because of the secret nature of the proceedings. According to the court, the special nature of national-security and terrorism-prevention cases means "relevant" can have a broader meaning for those investigations, say people familiar with the rulings.[46]

People familiar with the system that uses phone records in investigations have said that the court's novel legal theories allow the system to include bulk phone records, as long as there are privacy safeguards to limit searches. NSA analysts may query the database only "when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization", according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.[46] The NSA database includes data about people's phone calls – numbers dialed, how long a call lasted – but not the actual conversations. According to Supreme Court rulings, a phone call's content is covered by the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which restricts unreasonable searches, but the other types of data are not.[46]

"Relevant" has long been a broad standard, but the way the court is interpreting it, to mean, in effect, "everything," is new, said Mark Eckenwiler, a lawyer who until December 2012 was the Justice Department's primary authority on federal criminal surveillance law. "I think it's a stretch" of previous federal legal interpretations, said Eckenwiler. If a federal attorney "served a grand-jury subpoena for such a broad class of records in a criminal investigation, he or she would be laughed out of court".[46] Given the traditional legal definition of relevant, Timothy Edgar, a former top privacy lawyer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Council in the Bush and Obama administrations, noted it is "a fair point" to say that someone reading the law might believe it refers to "individualized requests" or "requests in small batches, rather than in bulk database form". From that standpoint, Edgar said, the reinterpretation of relevant amounts to "secret law".[46]

2013 NSA controversy

In June 2013, a copy of a top-secret warrant, issued by the court on April 25, 2013, was leaked to London's The Guardian newspaper by NSA contractor Edward Snowden.[47][48][49][50][51] That warrant orders Verizon Business Network Services to provide a daily feed to the NSA containing "telephony metadata" – comprehensive call detail records, including location data[52] – about all calls in its system, including those that occur "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls."[53] The Obama Administration published on July 31, 2013[54][55] a FISA Court ruling supporting an earlier order requiring a Verizon subsidiary to turn over all of its customers' phone logs for a three-month period, with rules that must be followed when accessing the data.[56]

The document leaked to The Guardian acted as a "smoking gun" and sparked a public outcry of criticism and complaints[47][57][58] that the court exceeded its authority and violated the Fourth Amendment by issuing general warrants.[59] The Washington Post then reported that it knew of other orders, and that the court had been issuing such orders, to all telecommunication companies, every three months since May 24, 2006.[60]

Since the telephone metadata program[61] was revealed, the intelligence community, some members of Congress, and the Obama administration have defended its legality and use. Most of these defenses involve the 1979 Supreme Court decision Smith v. Maryland which established that people do not have a "reasonable expectation" of privacy for electronic metadata held by third parties like a cellphone provider.[62] That data is not considered "content", theoretically giving law enforcement more flexibility in collecting it.[63]

On July 19, 2013, the court renewed the permission for the NSA to collect Verizon customer records en masse.[64][65] The U.S. government was relying on a part of American case law known as the "third-party doctrine". This notion said that when a person has voluntarily disclosed information to a third party — in this case, the telephony metadata — the customer no longer has a reasonable expectation of privacy over the numbers dialed nor their duration. Therefore, this doctrine argued, such metadata can be accessed by law enforcement with essentially no problem.[66] The content of communications are however subject to the Fourth Amendment. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held in October 2011, citing multiple Supreme Court precedents, that the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures applies to the contents of all communications, whatever the means, because "a person's private communications are akin to personal papers."[67]

Former FISC judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly who provided the legal foundation for the NSA amassing a database of all Americans’ phone records told associates in the summer of 2013 that she wanted her legal argument out.[68] Rulings for the plaintiff in cases brought by the A.C.L.U. on September 10 and 12, 2013, prompted James Clapper to concede that the government had overreached in its covert surveillance under part 215 of FISA and that the Act would likely be amended to reflect Congressional concern.[69]

The American Civil Liberties Union, a customer of Verizon, asked on November 22, 2013 a federal district court in Lower Manhattan, New York to end the NSA phone call data collection program. The ACLU argued that the program violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of privacy and information as well as exceeding the scope of its authorizing legislation, Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The U.S. government countered that the program is constitutional and that Congress was fully informed when it authorized and reauthorized Section 215. Moreover, a government-lawyer said, the ACLU has no standing to bring the case because it cannot prove that its members have been harmed by the NSA’s use of the data.[70]

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. Chief Justice John Roberts has appointed all of the current (as of 2013) judges, only one of whom was nominated by a Democratic President.[2] In 2001, the USA PATRIOT Act expanded the court from seven to eleven judges, and required that at least three of the Court's judges live within twenty miles (32 km) 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 FISA court.

Membership

(as of 21 May 2014)

Judge Judicial district Date appointed Term expiry Reference
Thomas Hogan (presiding since May 19, 2014) District of Columbia May 18, 2009 May 18, 2016 [71][72]
James E. Boasberg District of Columbia May 18, 2014 May 18, 2021 [72][73]
Rosemary M. Collyer District of Columbia March 8, 2013 March 7, 2020 [72]
Raymond J. Dearie Eastern District of New York July 2, 2012 July 1, 2019 [72]
Claire Eagan Northern District of Oklahoma February 13, 2013 May 18, 2019 [72]
Martin L.C. Feldman Eastern District of Louisiana May 19, 2010 May 18, 2017 [72]
Michael W. Mosman District of Oregon May 4, 2013 May 3, 2020 [72]
F. Dennis Saylor IV District of Massachusetts May 19, 2011 May 18, 2018 [72]
Susan Webber Wright Eastern District of Arkansas May 18, 2009 May 18, 2016 [72]
Thomas B. Russell United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky May 19, 2015 May 18, 2022 [74]
James Parker Jones United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia May 19, 2015 May 18, 2022 [74]
Anne C. Conway (Designate) United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida May 19, 2016 May 18, 2023 [75]
Rudolph Contreras (Designate) United States District Court for the District of Columbia May 19, 2016 May 18, 2023 [75]

Former members

Judge Judicial district Date appointed Term expiry Reference
James Zagel Northern District of Illinois May 18, 2008 May 18, 2015 [72]
Mary A. McLaughlin Eastern District of Pennsylvania May 18, 2008 May 18, 2015 [72]
Reggie Walton District of Columbia May 19, 2007
February 22, 2013 (presiding)		 May 18, 2014
May 18, 2014		 [76]
Jennifer B. Coffman Eastern District of Kentucky May 19, 2011 January 8, 2013 [77]
Roger Vinson Northern District of Florida May 4, 2006 May 3, 2013 [77]
John D. Bates District of Columbia February 22, 2006
May 19, 2009 (presiding)		 February 21, 2013 [77]
Malcolm Howard Eastern District of North Carolina May 19, 2005 May 18, 2012 [77]
Frederick J. Scullin Northern District of New York May 19, 2004 May 18, 2011 [77]
Dee Benson District of Utah April 8, 2004 April 7, 2011 [77]
George P. Kazen Southern District of Texas July 15, 2003 May 18, 2010 [77]
Robert C. Broomfield District of Arizona October 1, 2002 May 18, 2009 [77]
Colleen Kollar-Kotelly District of Columbia May 18, 2002 May 18, 2009 [77]
James G. Carr Northern District of Ohio May 19, 2002 May 18, 2008 [77]
James Robertson District of Columbia May 19, 2002 December 19, 2005 [77]
John Edwards Conway District of New Mexico May 19, 2002 October 30, 2003 [77]
Nathaniel M. Gorton District of Massachusetts May 19, 2001 May 18, 2008 [77]
Claude M. Hilton Eastern District of Virginia May 18, 2000 May 18, 2007 [77]
Harold Albert Baker Central District of Illinois May 18, 1998 May 18, 2005 [77]
Michael James Davis District of Minnesota May 18, 1999 May 18, 2006 [77]
Stanley Seymour Brotman District of New Jersey July 17, 1997 May 18, 2004 [77]
William Henry Stafford Jr. Northern District of Florida May 19, 1996 May 18, 2003 [77]
Royce C. Lamberth (presiding) District of Columbia May 19, 1995 May 18, 2002 [77]
John F. Keenan Southern District of New York July 24, 1994 May 18, 2001 [77]
James C. Cacheris Eastern District of Virginia September 10, 1993 May 18, 2000 [77]
Earl H. Carroll District of Arizona February 2, 1993 May 18, 1999 [77]
Charles Schwartz Jr. Eastern District of Louisiana August 5, 1992 May 18, 1998 [77]
Ralph G. Thompson Western District of Oklahoma June 11, 1990 May 18, 1997 [77]
Frank H. Freedman District of Massachusetts May 30, 1990 May 18, 1994 [77]
Wendell Alverson Miles Western District of Michigan September 21, 1989 May 18, 1996 [77]
Sidney Aronovitz Southern District of Florida June 8, 1989 May 18, 1992 [77]
Joyce H. Green District of Columbia May 18, 1988
May 19, 1990 (presiding)		 May 18, 1995 [77]
Conrad K. Cyr District of Maine May 18, 1987 November 20, 1989 [77]
Herbert F. Murray District of Maryland May 19, 1986 May 18, 1993 [77]
Lloyd MacMahon Southern District of New York July 5, 1985 April 8, 1989 [77]
Edward J. Devitt District of Minnesota January 11, 1985 November 10, 1992 [77]
James E. Noland Southern District of Indiana May 19, 1983
May 19, 1988 (presiding)		 May 18, 1990 [77]
John Lewis Smith, Jr. (presiding) District of Columbia May 19, 1982 May 18, 1988 [77]
Dudley B. Bonsal Southern District of New York December 2, 1981 May 18, 1984 [77]
Frederick A. Daugherty Northern District of Oklahoma May 18, 1981 May 18, 1988 [77]
William C. O'Kelley Northern District of Georgia May 18, 1980 May 18, 1987 [77]
Frederick B. Lacey District of New Jersey May 19, 1979 May 18, 1985 [77]
Frank J. McGarr Northern District of Illinois May 19, 1979 May 18, 1983 [77]
Thomas J. MacBride Eastern District of California May 19, 1979 May 18, 1980 [77]
George L. Hart (presiding) District of Columbia May 19, 1979 May 18, 1982 [77]
James Hargrove Meredith Eastern District of Missouri May 19, 1979 May 18, 1981 [77]
Lawrence W. Pierce District of Columbia May 19, 1979 January 1, 1981 [77]
Albert V. Bryan Eastern District of Virginia January 1, 1979 January 1, 1986 [77]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ↑ The phrase "secret law written by the court" is a little misleading, because the distinction between "creating" a body of law rather than "writing" is important, since courts do not have the authority to write law, even if the end result is very close to the same.

References

  1. ↑ Cohen, David B.; Wells, John Wilson (2004). American National Security and Civil Liberties in an Era of Terrorism. New York City: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 34. ISBN 978-1-403-96200-3.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Lichtblau, Eric (July 6, 2013). "In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A.". The New York Times. Retrieved July 9, 2013. Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case – the government – and its findings are almost never made public.
  3. 1 2 Wilber, Del Quentin (March 2, 2009). "Surveillance Court Quietly Moving". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 10, 2013.
  4. 1 2 3 Leonnig, Carol D.; Nakashima, Ellen; Gellman, Barton (June 29, 2013). "Secret-Court Judges Upset at Portrayal of 'Collaboration' with Government". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 10, 2013. "For about 30 years, the court was located on the sixth floor of the Justice Department's headquarters, down the hall from the officials who would argue in front of it. (The court moved to the District's federal courthouse in 2009.)"
  5. ↑ (subscription required) Evan, Perez (June 9, 2013). "Secret Court's Oversight Gets Scrutiny". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved June 20, 2013.
  6. ↑ Harwood, Matthew. "The Terrifying Surveillance Case of Brandon Mayfield | Al Jazeera America." The Terrifying Surveillance Case of Brandon Mayfield | Al Jazeera America. N.p., 8 Feb. 2014. Web. 02 Dec. 2014. http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/the-terrifying-surveillancecaseofbrandonmayfield.html
  7. 1 2 Staff (May 4, 2012). "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court Orders 1979–2014". Electronic Privacy Information Center. Retrieved July 27, 2015.
  8. ↑ "FISA Annual Reports to Congress - 1979".
  9. ↑ Shenon, Philip (August 23, 2002). "Secret Court Says F.B.I. Aides Misled Judges in 75 Cases". The New York Times. Retrieved July 11, 2013.
  10. ↑ Risen, James; Lichtblau, Eric (December 16, 2005). "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts". The New York Times. Retrieved July 11, 2013.
  11. ↑ Leonnig, Carol D.; Linzer, Dafna (December 21, 2005). "Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest – Jurist Concerned Bush Order Tainted Work of Secret Panel". The Washington Post (via Information Clearing House). Retrieved July 11, 2013.
  12. ↑ Roberts, Dan (July 9, 2013). "US Must Fix Secret Fisa Courts, Says Top Judge Who Granted Surveillance Orders – James Robertson Breaks Ranks and Says He Was Shocked to Hear of Changes to Allow Broader Authorisation of NSA Programs". The Guardian. Retrieved July 11, 2013.
  13. ↑ Nakashima, Ellen (8 September 2013). "Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011". The Washington Post. Retrieved 3 February 2014.
  14. ↑ https://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/fiscr082208.pdf
  15. ↑ Miller, Claire Cain; Perlroth, Nicole (June 28, 2013). "Secret Court Declassifies Yahoo's Role in Disclosure Fight". Bits (blog of The New York Times). Retrieved July 11, 2013.
  16. 1 2 Ackerman, Spencer (June 6, 2013). "Fisa Chief Judge Defends Integrity of Court over Verizon Records Collection – Reggie Walton Tells The Guardian Claims Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court 'Is a Rubber Stamp [Are] Absolutely False' – Revealed: NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily". The Guardian. Retrieved July 11, 2013.
  17. ↑ Walton, Reggie B. (29 July 2013). "2013-07-29 Letter of FISA Court president Reggie B. Walton to the Chairmann of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick J. Leahy about certain operations of the FISA Court". http://www.leahy.senate.gov. Retrieved 25 August 2013. External link in |publisher= (help)
  18. 1 2 3 4 Barnes, Robert (8 June 2013). "Secrecy of surveillance programs blunts challenges about legality". The Washington Post. Retrieved 12 February 2014.
  19. ↑ Masnick, Mike (16 August 2013). "FISA Court Argues To Senate That It's Not A Rubber Stamp". TechDirt. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
  20. ↑ "2013-10-11 Letter of FISC president Reggie B. Walton to U.S. Senator Charles S. Grassley". Mike Masnick. Techdirt. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
  21. 1 2 Leonnig, Carol D. (15 October 2013). "Secret court says it is no rubber stamp; work led to changes in U.S. spying requests". The Washington Post. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
  22. ↑ Greenwald, Glenn (May 3, 2013). "The Bad Joke Called 'the FISA Court' Shows How a 'Drone Court' Would Work – Newly Released Data Show That the Government Submitted 1,789 Eavesdropping Requests Last Year, and None Was Rejected". The Guardian. Retrieved July 12, 2013.
  23. ↑ Staff (December 19, 2005). "Toobin: Bush on 'Questionable Legal Footing'". CNN. Retrieved July 12, 2013.
  24. ↑ Pauley III, William H. (27 December 2013). "United States District Court Southern District of New York: American Civil Liberties Union v. James R. Clapper (13 Civ. 3994) (WHP)) -Footnote 3 at page 8: Testimony before the House Pennanent Select Committee on Intelligence, dated Jun. 18, 2013, Robert Litt, General Counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence at 17-18 (ECF No. 33-13)." (PDF). American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved 28 December 2013.
  25. ↑ Leahy, Patrick; Grassley, Charles; Specter, Arlen (February 2003). Interim Report on FBI Oversight in the 107th Congress by the Senate Judiciary Committee: FISA Implementation Failures. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Congress Senate Judiciary Committee (via Federation of American Scientists). OCLC 51857861. Retrieved July 12, 2013.
  26. ↑ Fahrenthold, David A. (July 28, 2013). "With NSA Revelations, Sen. Ron Wyden's Vague Warnings About Privacy Finally Become Clear". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 29, 2013.
  27. 1 2 Klein, Ezra (July 5, 2013). "Did You Know John Roberts Is Also Chief Justice of the NSA's Surveillance State?". The Washington Post. Wonkblog. Retrieved July 10, 2013. Only one of the 11 members is a Democrat.
  28. ↑ "The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court". The Washington Post. 7 June 2013. Retrieved 12 February 2014.
  29. 1 2 Walsh, Joan (July 9, 2013). "John Roberts' Scary Secret Powers – Running the Shadowy FISA Court, Where 10 of 11 Judges He Appointed Are Republican, Could Even Trump His SCOTUS Role". Salon. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
  30. ↑ Savage, Charlie (25 July 2013). "Roberts’s Picks Reshaping Secret Surveillance Court". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 February 2014.
  31. ↑ Savage, Charlie (7 February 2014). "N.S.A. Program Gathers Data on a Third of Nation’s Calls, Officials Say". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 February 2014.
  32. ↑ Shiffman, John; Cooke, Kristina (June 21, 2013). "The Judges Who Preside over America's Secret Court". Reuters. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
  33. ↑ (registration required) Savage, Charlie (July 25, 2013). "Roberts's Picks Reshaping Secret Surveillance Court". The New York Times. Retrieved July 26, 2013.
  34. ↑ Vladeck, Steve (May 22, 2013). "Why Clapper Matters: The Future of Programmatic Surveillance". lawfareblog.com. Retrieved July 18, 2013.
  35. ↑ Staff (June 20, 2013). "Procedures Used by NSA to Target Non-US Persons: Exhibit A – Full Document – Top-Secret Documents Show Fisa Judges Have Signed Off on Broad Orders Allowing the NSA to Make Use of Information 'Inadvertently' Collected from Domestic US Communications Without a Warrant – Revealed: The Secret Rules That Allow NSA to Use US Data Without a Warrant". The Guardian. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
  36. ↑ Staff (June 20, 2013). "Procedures Used by NSA to Minimize Data Collection from US Persons: Exhibit B – Full Document – The Documents Detail the Procedures the NSA Is Required to Follow to Target 'Non-US Persons' under Its Foreign Intelligence Powers – And What the Agency Does to Minimize Data Collected on US Citizens and Residents – Revealed: The Secret Rules That Allow NSA to Use US Data Without a Warrant". The Guardian. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
  37. 1 2 Greenwald, Glenn; Ball, James (June 20, 2013). "The Top Secret Rules That Allow NSA to Use US Data Without a Warrant – Fisa Court Submissions Show Broad Scope of Procedures Governing NSA's Surveillance of Americans' Communication – Document One: Procedures Used by NSA to Target Non-US Persons – Document Two: Procedures Used by NSA to Minimise Data Collected from US Persons". The Guardian. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
  38. ↑ Ellen Nakashima, Barton Gellman and Greg Miller (21 June 2013). "New documents reveal parameters of NSA’s secret surveillance programs". The Washington Post. Retrieved 13 February 2014.
  39. ↑ Greenwald, Glenn (June 18, 2013). "Fisa Court Oversight: A Look Inside a Secret and Empty Process – Obama and Other NSA Defenders Insist There Are Robust Limitations on Surveillance But the Documents Show Otherwise". The Guardian. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
  40. ↑ Watkins, Aiy (July 17, 2013). "Skeptical Congress Turns Its Spycam on NSA Surveillance". McClatchy Washington Bureau. Retrieved July 18, 2013.
  41. 1 2 Selya, Bruce M. (August 22, 2008). "United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review Case No. 08-01 In Re Directives [redacted text] Pursuant to Section 105B of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" (PDF). U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (via the Federation of American Scientists). Retrieved July 15, 2013.
  42. ↑ Risen, James; Lichtblau, Eric (January 15, 2009). "Court Affirms Wiretapping Without Warrants". The New York Times. Retrieved January 16, 2009.
  43. ↑ (subscription required) Perez, Evan (January 16, 2009). "Court Backs U.S. Wiretapping". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 16, 2009.
  44. ↑ Wilber, Del Quentin; Smith, R. Jeffrey (January 16, 2009). "Intelligence Court Releases Ruling in Favor of Warrantless Wiretapping". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 15, 2013.
  45. ↑ Braun, Stephan (July 9, 2013). "Former Judge Admits Flaws in Secret Court". Associated Press (via ABC News). Retrieved July 10, 2013.
  46. 1 2 3 4 5 6 (subscription required) Valentino-Devries, Jennifer; Gorman, Siobhan (July 8, 2013). "Secret Court's Redefinition of 'Relevant' Empowered Vast NSA Data-Gathering". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 14, 2013.
  47. 1 2 Greenwald, Glenn (June 5, 2013). "NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily – Exclusive: Top Secret Court Order Requiring Verizon to Hand Over All Call Data Shows Scale of Domestic Surveillance under Obama". The Guardian. Retrieved July 12, 2013.
  48. ↑ Greenwald, Glenn; Ackerman, Spencer (June 27, 2013). "NSA Collected US Email Records in Bulk for More Than Two Years under Obama – Secret Program Launched by Bush Continued 'Until 2011' – Fisa Court Renewed Collection Order Every 90 Days – Current NSA Programs Still Mine US Internet Metadata". The Guardian. Retrieved July 10, 2013.
  49. ↑ Greenwald, Glenn; Ackerman, Spencer (June 27, 2013). "How the NSA Is Still Harvesting Your Online Data – Files Show Vast Scale of Current NSA Metadata Programs, with One Stream Alone Celebrating 'One Trillion Records Processed'". The Guardian. Retrieved July 10, 2013.
  50. ↑ (registration required) Savage, Charlie; Wyatt, Edward; Baker, Peter (June 6, 2013). "U.S. Confirms That It Gathers Online Data Overseas". The New York Times. Retrieved July 10, 2013.
  51. ↑ Nakashima, Ellen (June 6, 2013). "Verizon Providing All Call Records to U.S. under Court Order". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 10, 2013.
  52. ↑ Secondary Order, July 19, 2013
  53. ↑ Vinson, Roger (April 25, 2013). "In Re Application of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for an Order Requiring the Production of Tangible Things from Verizon Business Network Services, Inc. on Behalf of MCI Communication Services, Inc. d/b/a Verizon Business Services" (PDF). U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (via the Electronic Privacy Information Center). Retrieved June 20, 2013.
  54. ↑ Nakashima, Ellen (July 31, 2013). "Newly Ceclassified Documents on Phone Records Program Released". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 4, 2013.
  55. ↑ Savage, Charlie; Sanger, David E. (July 31, 2013). "Senate Panel Presses N.S.A. on Phone Logs". The New York Times. Retrieved August 4, 2013.
  56. ↑ Vinson, Roger (April 25, 2013). "FISA Court Primary Order Collection 215". FISA Court (via DocumentCloud). Retrieved August 4, 2013.
  57. ↑ (registration required) Savage, Charlie; Wyatt, Edward (June 5, 2013). "U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls". The New York Times. Retrieved June 6, 2013.
  58. ↑ Nakashima, Ellen; Markon, Jerry; O'Keefe, Ed (June 6, 2013). "Administration, Lawmakers Defend NSA Program to Collect Phone Records". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 10, 2013.
  59. ↑ Goldenberg, Suzanne (June 14, 2013). "Al Gore: NSA's Secret Surveillance Program 'Not Really the American Way' – Former Vice-President – Not Persuaded by Argument That Program Was Legal – Urges Congress and Obama to Amend the Laws". The Guardian. Retrieved July 12, 2013.
  60. ↑ Gellman, Barton (June 15, 2013). "U.S. Surveillance Architecture Includes Collection of Revealing Internet, Phone Metadata". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 12, 2013.
  61. ↑ Priest, Dana (9 August 2013). "Piercing the confusion around NSA’s phone surveillance program". The Washington Post. Retrieved 14 August 2013.
  62. ↑ Peterson, Andrea (4 December 2013). "The NSA says it ‘obviously’ can track locations without a warrant. That’s not so obvious.". The Washington Post's The Switch. Retrieved 6 December 2013.
  63. ↑ Sottek, T.C. (July 17, 2013). "Lawmakers Blast Phone Surveillance Dragnet: 'We Have a Very Serious Violation of the Law' – Can Congress Rein in Its Own Demons?". The Verge. Retrieved July 18, 2013.
  64. ↑ Whittaker, Zack (July 19, 2013). "Verizon's Secret Data Order Timed to Expire, but NSA Spying to Carry On". Zero Day (blog of ZDNet). Retrieved July 29, 2013.
  65. ↑ King, Rachel (July 19, 2013). "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Asserts Authority over Phone Records". Between the Lines (blog of ZDNet). Retrieved July 29, 2013.
  66. ↑ Farivar, Cyrus (July 19, 2013). "Snowden Be Damned: Government Renews US Call Record Order – Again, Feds Argue There's No 'Legitimate Expectation of Privacy' over Metadata". Ars Technica. Retrieved July 29, 2013.
  67. ↑ John D Bates (3 October 2011). "[redacted]" (PDF). pp. 73–74.
  68. ↑ Ellen Nakashima and Carol D. Leonnig (13 October 2013). "Effort underway to declassify document that is legal foundation for NSA phone program". The Washington Post. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
  69. ↑ Fisa judge: Snowden's NSA disclosures triggered important spying debate, Ackerman, Spencer. The Guardian. 13 September 2013. Accessed 14 September 2013.
  70. ↑ Nakashima, Ellen (23 November 2013). "ACLU asks court to end NSA surveillance program that collects phone call data". The Washington Post. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  71. ↑ Reuters (March 25, 2014). "TThomas Hogan Named Presiding Judge Of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court". Huffington Post. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
  72. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Staff (n.d.). "The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – 2014 Membership". Federation of American Scientists. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
  73. ↑ Aftergood, Steven (7 February 2014). "FISA Court Appointments, Potential Reforms, and More from CRS". Secrecy News. Retrieved 7 February 2014.
  74. 1 2 "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court 2015 Membership". fas.org. Retrieved 2016-03-09.
  75. 1 2 fas.org, THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE COURT: 2016 Membership
  76. ↑ Staff (n.d.). "The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – 2013 Membership". Federation of American Scientists. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
  77. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44
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