Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - Provisions

Provisions

The subchapters of FISA provide for:

  • Electronic Surveillance (50 U.S.C. ch.36 subch.I)
  • Physical Searches (50 U.S.C. ch.36 subch.II)
  • Pen Registers and Trap & Trace Devices for Foreign Intelligence Purposes (50 U.S.C. ch.36 subch.III)
  • Access to certain Business Records for Foreign Intelligence Purposes (50 U.S.C. ch.36 subch.IV)
  • Reporting Requirement (50 U.S.C. ch.36 subch.V)

The act created a court which meets in secret, and approves or denies requests for search warrants. Only the number of warrants applied for, issued and denied, is reported. In 1980 (the first full year after its inception), it approved 322 warrants. This number has steadily grown to 2224 warrants in 2006. In the period 1979-2006 a total of 22,990 applications for warrants were made to the Court of which 22,985 were approved (sometimes with modifications; or with the splitting up, or combining together, of warrants for legal purposes), and only 5 were definitively rejected.

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    Drinking tents were full, glasses began to clink in carriages, hampers to be unpacked, tempting provisions to be set forth, knives and forks to rattle, champagne corks to fly, eyes to brighten that were not dull before, and pickpockets to count their gains during the last heat. The attention so recently strained on one object of interest, was now divided among a hundred; and, look where you would, there was a motley assemblage of feasting, talking, begging, gambling and mummery.
    Charles Dickens (1812–1870)