FISA Court Changes Many Surveillance Requests Before Approval

Fighting back at reputation as a "rubber stamp" for NSA

The secretive US court overseeing mass surveillance has told the Senate that it substantially modifies nearly a quarter of all government surveillance requests, even though it approves almost all of them.

Since its creation in 1978, the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court has only rejected a handful of the thousands of requests for surveillance made by the FBI or the National Security Agency, prompting a perception of the court as a step in the wiretapping process, rather than the major judicial check on unreasonable searches and seizures.

But Reggie Walton, the presiding judge of the court, wrote to the leadership of the Senate judiciary committee to rebut accusations that the Fisa court is merely a judicial rubber stamp.