FISA court never turned down govt warrants to wiretap--until 2003

[BurtWorm]

There's something about those Bush admin requests that just doesn't sit right with the court, according to Josh Marshall:



http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_12_11.php#007275

Here are some more details on the record of the FISA Court (the Court established in 1978 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act).

According to this table compiled from DOJ statistics at the EPIC website, the FISA Court did not reject a single warrant application from its beginning in 1979 through 2002. In 2003 it rejected four applications. In 2004, the number was again zero.

So, in a quarter century, the FISA Court has rejected four government applications for warrants.


...


Two applications were "approved as modified," and the United States appealed these applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, as applications having been denied in part. On November 18, 2002, the Court of Review issued a judgment that "ordered and adjudged that the motions for review be granted, the challenged portions of the orders on review be reversed, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's Rule 11 be vacated, and the cases be remanded with instructions to grant the United States' applications as submitted..."

In 2004, the number of approved warrants with "substantive modifications" was 94 out of a total of 1758.

Before the year 2000 modifications were seldom if ever made. In 2000, there was one; in 2001, two; and in 2002, there were two applications modified but those modifications were later reversed..

2003 is where the change comes.

-- Josh Marshall