From the middle of the article:
“That’s been a traditional concern that the court might have become a rubber stamp and that its approval is only a formality,” Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, said in a telephone interview. “The government’s argument, and it’s also an argument that has been made occasionally by the judges, is in fact that the Justice Department has grasped the court’s expectations so well that the only applications they submit to the court are ones that are likely to meet its approval.”
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/domestic-surveillance-court-approved-100-of-2010-warrant-requests.arsoh yeah... I'm buying that shit.