Posted on 06/23/2013 1:59:33 PM PDT by dirtboy
Wedged into a secure, windowless basement room deep below the Capitol Visitors Center, U.S. District Court Judge John Bates appeared before dozens of senators earlier this month for a highly unusual, top-secret briefing.
The lawmakers pressed Bates, according to people familiar with the session, to discuss the inner workings of the United States clandestine terrorism surveillance tribunal, which Bates oversaw from 2006 until earlier this year.
FISA court papers show NSA warrantless surveillance rules Classified documents spell out procedures for targeting foreigners and minimizing the collection of data from U.S. persons.
Bates had rarely spoken of his sensitive work. He reluctantly agreed to appear at the behest of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who arranged the session after new disclosures that the court had granted the government broad access to millions of Americans telephone and Internet communications.
The two-hour meeting on June 13 featuring Bates and two top spy agency officials prompted by reports days earlier by The Washington Post and Britains Guardian newspaper about the vast reach of the programs reflects a new and uncomfortable reality for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and its previously obscure members. Within the past month, lawmakers have begun to ask who the courts judges are, what they do, why they have almost never declined a government surveillance request and why their work is so secretive.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Do we have any other star chamber courts like this in America?
Useless "oversight." Defund it and be done with it.
The FISA court has a single purpose ~ to issue warrents upon presentment of probable cause that there's a foreign agent or sabateur mucking up the works INSIDE THE USA. I don't think there was any secret that we tap the world ~ as do the other guys eh! Our courts have no extraterritorial authority.
The question is whether or not they've actually limited themselves and NSA operations to that condition, or have they gone beyond what we were told was their authority.
Your typical European Star Chamber actually condemns people and draws and quarters them on the plaza just below their window. We don't do that.
Not yet.
The first step is labeling the citizenry as terrorists. The rest follows logically.
BTW, Obama is too stupid to plan any of this, but there are doctrinaire commies in his entourage who have plans in mind to repeat history as they see it.
HISTORY STOPS HERE due to the Second Amendment.
Like after Katrina???
But there was no general disarmament effort made ~ that would have been madness!
BTW, it was Janet Napolitano who decided we are all terrorists and started spouting nonsense. We’ve already decided she’s an overweight woman with an abusive personality who should not be allowed near children or small animals. That’s now her public reputation.
So that post-Katrina disarmament was just an illusion?
The Coast Guard, Navy Reserve and National Guard were doing a tremendous job rescuing people ~
~ our news media do not like America or Americans. They'll take a disaster and make it worse.
And the court fight by the NRA to get those confiscated firearms back in the hands of the law-abiding owners was just a bunch of made up rubbish?
Your depravity apparently knows no limits.
N.O. Police Returning Guns Confiscated Post-Katrina
Why would there be a story about the NOLA police returning confiscated guns if they were never confiscated in the first place.
our news media do not like America or Americans. They'll take a disaster and make it worse.
You mean the same media that painted Obama as a savior during and after Sandy when clearly the opposite was the case?
You truly are a jackass.
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