The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was established in 1978 to provide a measure of oversight and due process for secret law enforcement agency requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies and other suspects in the U.S. But information about the
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was established in 1978 to provide a measure of oversight and due process for secret law enforcement agency requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies and other suspects in the U.S. But information about the requests contained in a recent Justice Department memo suggests the court is serving as little more than a rubber stamp for federal agencies.
Of the nearly 3,000 requests made by the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to intercept communications such as emails and phone calls the past two years, not a single one has been rejected by the FISC.
The memo also noted that last year the FBI requested 48,642 national security letters, which require internet and telecommunications companies to turn over information on their customers, and are typically accompanied by a gag order that prevents the companies from disclosing the FBI requested the data, oftentimes without any time limits. This includes requests covering information for thousands of American citizens.
Microsoft announced this month it is suing the Justice Department over the practice, claiming it violates its customers’ Fourth Amendment right to know if the government searches or seizes their property and the company’s First Amendment right to communicate such demands to its customers.
“People should not lose their rights just because they are storing their information in the cloud,” Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Bradford L. Smith told the New York Times.
The times and technology might have changed since the drafting of the Fourth Amendment, but our unalienable rights have not. Based on what little we have been able to glimpse of our government’s secret surveillance activities, it is clear the government has far exceeded its authority and violated citizens’ rights. It is time to end police state tactics such as dragnet surveillance and return to the venerable legal principles of due process and the issuance of specific search warrants based only on probable cause, not fishing expeditions.
— The Orange County Register
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