“Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court”
I don’t remember ever knowing there was a Secret Court.
Maybe I did. I guess there are some people on this site that know about it.
FISA court
some info here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court
https://ssd.eff.org/foreign/fisa
The way it is supposed to work is individual requests are made to a court who approves and then surveillance conducted. Not designed as an open-ended fishing expedition. For Obama to try and hide behind the law is ridiculous
I don’t remember ever knowing there was a Secret Court.
The FISA court was formed as part of the Patriot Act. It was widely discussed at the time (2001), but could've been missed in the welter of everything else that was happening at the time.
regarding the secret court - (note the Eff.org page comes up slowly) Link below to wikipedia source
Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/confirmed-nsa-spying-millions-americans
Excerpt:
Today, the Guardian newspaper confirmed what EFF (and many others) have long claimed: the NSA is conducting widespread, untargeted, domestic surveillance on millions of Americans. This revelation should end, once and for all, the government’s long-discredited secrecy claims about its dragnet domestic surveillance programs. It should spur Congress and the American people to make the President finally tell the truth about the government’s spying on innocent Americans.
In a report by Glenn Greenwald, the paper published an order from the “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court” (or FISC) that directs Verizon to provide “on an ongoing daily basis” all call records for any call “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls” and any call made “between the United States and abroad.”
US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court
Well, it's not so secret anymore:
United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
It was originally created to fight the KGB, but it's power and responsibilities were greatly "enhanced" (to use a favorite government euphemism) by the Patriot Act.
And when the Patriot Act was first created, and then renewed in May 2011 (by House Republicans), we were all promised that it would serve as a check against the kind of abuses that have been revealed this past week.
What a joke!