lX4FYxPQeHMugOdazHW3hQAgLamfqQBRkvsAAXDCkF8EF9Fqwr 4j04cKzSFkd94ZZXDW5eF6JgNdeLzJZ1zEBbHabui0jnt9Noa1

: Adapted from the book "Main Justice", 1996, ISBN 0-684-81135-9.
:
* Last year, a secret court in the Justice Department authorized a record
* 697 'national security' wiretaps on American soil, outside normal
* constitutional procedures.
*
* The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is a 1978 law that permits
* secret buggings and wiretaps of individuals suspected of being agents
* of a hostile foreign government or international terrorist organization
* EVEN WHEN THE TARGET IS NOT SUSPECTED OF COMMITTING ANY CRIME.
*
* The FISA court operates outside the normal constitutional standards for
* searches and seizures. Non-government personnel are not allowed.
* The courts files cannot be publicly reviewed.
*
* The average U.S. citizen might reasonably assume use of this court
* is at the least: unusual.
*
* It is not. In fact, in the United States today it is increasingly
* common. In 1994, federal courts authorized more wiretaps for
* intelligence-gathering and national security purposes than they
* did to investigate ordinary federal crimes.
*
* The review process to prevent legal and factual errors is virtually
* non-existent.
*
* And the FISA system's courtroom advocacy is monumentally one-sided.
*
* The court has never formally rejected an application. Not once.
*
* For the first time in modern U.S. history, the Congress had
* institutionalized a process for physical searches outside of
* Fourth Amendment standards.
*
* Not even Congress' intelligenc