May 2, 2003

Secret Warrants

The NY Times reports today that the Justice Department used secret warrants a record 1,228 times in 2002. The good news: while this is up 30% from 2001 it seems low.

The other news: the Foreign Intelligence surveillance Act (FISA) Court did not turn down a single request for a secret warrant. This could be good or bad: the justies either carefully screened and prepared their requests or FISA is just a rubber stamp.

The more disturbing news: the Bush folk want to let the CIA and Pentagon also use FISA to process secret warrants.

You might want to go read this and then think about whether you want this FISA to even exist.

UPDATE: Liquid List's Tarek provides some more discussion on secret warrants.

Posted by Steve on May 2, 2003
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