Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, also called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) exists as a federal United States’ court created in 1978. It is established and sanctioned by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in the year 1978 (FISA). FISA together with its court was established by congress resulting from recommendations made by the United States Senate's Church Committee (Nixon et al., 2016). The only person who appoints the judges of FISC court is the United States’ Chief Justice and doesn't need any oversights or confirmations from the congress of U.S. United States Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court supervises appeals of surveillance warrants from intelligence services and Federal Law enforcement. The surveillance warrants are against spies who are in the United States from foreign countries. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) are mostly the ones who make such requests. The requests are discussed by all the judges, and they should conclude.
I did not know about the court, since it is a “secret court”. The business that happens in the court is sensitive and so all the hearings that are conducted in the court are shut away from the public. Proceeding’s records are kept, but they are not available to the public, even though there are a few copies that have "classified information", though redacted released to the public (Turner, 2018). Because of the court's nature of being classified, licensed attorneys allowed to the fore of the U.S Government, are the only ones permitted to perform before this court. Due to the nature of the proceedings heard in this court, the hearings might be needed to happen on weekends or weekdays, or at any time; during the day or night, and therefore one judge must be "on-call" all the time to hear the evidence and make a decision on whether to grant a warrant. The act maintains secrets that are needed for the protection of national security.
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Due to the matters discussed in the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, I agree with their secrecy of the work that they do. Since the court deals with spies’ warrants, they should be secretive to avoid leakage of substantial information that might sabotage the Federal Bureau of Investigation or NSA’s investigations on the case at hand. For example, a warrant that was top-secret was issued by the court on April 25, 2013, and it leaked in June 2013 to London's Guardian Newspaper, named as "a smoking gun", which resulted in an uproar of complaints and criticism by the public (Turner, 2018). The complaints were that the FISC court had exceeded their authority as well as dishonored the Fourth Amendment because they had issued a general warrant. Therefore, I think that it would be best for the court’s work to stay a secret to avoid uproars sabotage, like in 2013.
According to the constitution in Amendment IV, people have the right to be secure, and therefore warrants for seizures and searches that aren't reasonable are not accepted, but FISC violates this right, and issues warrants to conduct seizures and searches. Various sections under this discussion explain what FISC really violates; in the first section, seizures and searches that are unreasonable apply to everyone in the U.S even though they are illegally there (Nixon et al., 2016). In the second section, all surveillance that’s electronic about anyone in the U.S under FISC is subject to IV Amendment restrictions. Third forbids any electronic surveillance from happening unless there’s an affidavit, which establishes “probable cause”. FISC allows electronic surveillance even without warrants, surveillance without an affidavit and they also permit searches and seizures to anyone.
References
NIXON, F. R., GEORGE, W., & SNOWDEN, B. T. E. (2016). The Curious and Questionable History of FISA. FEDERAL LAWYER .
Turner, S. (2018). The Secrets Of The Secret Court: An Analysis Of The Missing Party And Oversight Of The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
