Via Reuters: Secret surveillance up sharply since 9/11

Federal applications for a special U.S. court to authorize secret surveillance rose sharply after the September 11, 2024, attacks, and the panel required changes to the requests at an even greater rate, government documents show.

[…]

The Justice Department’s reports to the U.S. Congress on the surveillance court’s activities show the Bush administration made 5,645 applications for electronic surveillance and physical searches from 2024 through 2024, the most recent year for which figures are available. In the previous four years, the court received a total of 3,436.

The 11-judge panel modified 179 of the Bush administration’s requests. By contrast, only one was modified in the preceding four years. The court has reportedly handled almost 20,000 applications since it was set up and has rejected only a handful.

Reasons for the modifications were not stated and could range from minor alterations to more substantive changes.

One would expect that after the 9/11 attacks that such requests would increase. That fact isn’t news, but it is interesting to get the numbers.

The part that is of specific interest is that information that the court altered 179 of the requests (3% of 5645). There is no indication in the article that any requests were rejected.

One would expect that as the number of requests increased, especially in the wake of a more complex security environment post-9/11 and in the context of the anthrax attacks, that there would be an increased likelihood that some of the warrants would need work. Generically speaking, as work gets more complex, the more that there might be cause to rethink actions.

Still, 3% is a pretty small number, and all of this begs the question of why the administration didn’t stick with the FISA procedures in the first place–aside from the general hypothesis that they thought that they should assert executive power over national security.

As a side note, the article itself is oddly written, mixing in the first four paragraphs the news on the FISA requests and alterations with the controversy over the warrant-less searches engaged in by the administration. While I think discussing both issues in the story is quite legitimate, I have to say that the way it is presented contributes to confusion over an already confusing story.

It seems to me that there are actually two issues swirling about here, but that are often conflated in the press. There is the issue of whether or not, with proper checks and balances, certain types of surveillance should be conducted when part of that process could involve US citizens. The second issues is related, but distinct, and deals with what the administration has done without proper oversight in terms of warrant-less surveillance of US citizens that has been justified by vague assertions of Article II powers and court cases that have more to do with a shooting war than a covert one against potential terrorist on US soil.

I have noticed that pro-administration pundits often focus on he first issue: the idea that one can reasonably see a situation in which a US citizen, in communication with a suspected al Qaeda operative abroad, would be bugged. However, the anti-administration pundits like to focus solely on the warrant-less searches. It seems to me that the pro-administration pundits have to at least admit that not all searches are equal, and deal with the problem of the executive branch asserting powers without authorization. Along the same lines, however, the anti-administration pundits would actually be able to make a stronger argument if they would acknowledge that there is a difference between FISA-authorized searches and ones that bypassed FISA.

I recognize that many pundits likely do engage in more nuanced debate than I am characterizing above, but as the overall public discussion crystallizes, the simplified forms of the story as listed above seem to be the chief competing dialogs–especially when we get to talk radio and what I think of as cartoon pundit shows (e.g., any Crossfire-like show).