United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (or FISC) is a U.S. federal court authorized under 50 U.S.C. § 1803, Pub.L. 95-511, 92 Stat. 1788, enacted October 25, 1978. It was established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). The FISC oversees requests for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign intelligence agents inside the United States by federal law enforcement agencies (primarily the F.B.I.). The FISA and FISC were inspired by the recommendations of the Church Committee.

Read more about United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court:  FISA Warrant, Closed Hearings and Classified Proceedings, Composition, Current Membership, Former Membership

Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, foreign, intelligence and/or court:

    I feel most at home in the United States, not because it is intrinsically a more interesting country, but because no one really belongs there any more than I do. We are all there together in its wholly excellent vacuum.
    Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)

    We are apt to say that a foreign policy is successful only when the country, or at any rate the governing class, is united behind it. In reality, every line of policy is repudiated by a section, often by an influential section, of the country concerned. A foreign minister who waited until everyone agreed with him would have no foreign policy at all.
    —A.J.P. (Alan John Percivale)

    Today’s difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal.
    Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)

    Maybe it’s understandable what a history of failures America’s foreign policy has been. We are, after all, a country full of people who came to America to get away from foreigners. Any prolonged examination of the U.S. government reveals foreign policy to be America’s miniature schnauzer—a noisy but small and useless part of the national household.
    —P.J. (Patrick Jake)

    The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
    F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

    Follow a shaddow, it still flies you;
    Seeme to flye it, it will pursue:
    So court a mistris, shee denyes you;
    Let her alone, shee will court you.
    Say, are not women truely, then,
    Stil’d but the shaddowes of us men?
    At morne, and even, shades are longest;
    At noone, they are or short, or none:
    So men at weakest, they are strongest,
    But grant us perfect, they’re not knowne.
    Say, are not women truely, then,
    Stil’d but the shaddowes of us men?
    Ben Jonson (1572–1637)