Surveillance

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the US Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court spoke yesterday at the ABA's National
Security Law gathering. (On C-SPAN).

Points of interest:

Why the court is not involved in domestic surveillance with
the rise of terrorism and militancy in the US: It was considered 
during the implementation of the recent Anti-Terrorism Act but 
a decision was made to leave that task to District Courts.

Why the court has denied only a dozen out of 8,000 requests
for surveillance: All are excellently prepared and the judges 
advise on the few applications that are not to make them 
approvable.

He went on to say that numbers do not tell the real story, that
there are a variety of ways orders are issued and continued to
keep an investigation viable and as it evolves. He cited the 
differences in renewals between orders covering individuals and 
those covering organizations: the first must be renewed every 
90 days, the latter every year.

Moreover, there may be changes during an investigation, say,
by targeting an individual within an org, with difference regs, or
combining individuals into a group, with also different regs. So
the numbers of orders do not actually reflect how things work.

However, the Court makes and annual report to Congress.

Judge Lamberth joked that he hoped the Court's decisions
were "constitutional," and after the laughter, apologized and
said he should not have said that.

He said that positions on the court are avidly sought, that the
work was the most "fun" he had ever had, that it was very
exciting to be part of the select group that deals with the highest
secrets of the land.

He commented on how "Article 3" provisions to protect national
security and related secrets conflict with the FOIA, by saying
first things first.

-----

A related note on Greg's fruitless FOIA requests to various 
agencies about cpunks: active investigations are protected from 
FOIA requests, indeed, it is not uncommon to keep an investigation 
"active" to keep the secrets, to redefine the targets, to redefine as
the Courts helpfully advise.

Be sure to laugh at the constitutional joke, it's fun to be an insider 
playing with vital national life and death decisions and amusing the 
audience on TV.