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Tuesday, June 10, 2008 12:00 AM

NYT circulates fear-mongering claims on FISA debate

The White House and Congress prepare to tell Americans: If you want to stay safe, you must give the president the power to spy on you without warrants, and immunize telecoms from the consequences of lawbreaking.

Glenn Greenwald

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Tuesday, June 10, 2008 07:55 AM

FISA numbers

Whenever the FISA debate comes up, I'm always reminded of a post Josh Marshall made a few years back wherein he cited a study by EPIC that tallied up the number of FISA warrants granted and denied by year. I've dug up the link here:

http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html

The list has been updated since I last viewed it. From 1979-2007, the FISA court has approved over 25,000 warrants and denied a grand total of nine. Of those 25,000 approvals, a full 49% have been approved during the Bush administration. Tellingly, all nine denials have come during the Bush years.

That's staggering. Clearly the FISA court will only deny a warrant if there's some gross violation of the rules. They didn't deny a warrant for over 20 years.

—gorillagogo Read gorillagogo's other letters

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