.... You don’t have to think Edward Snowden is a hero, to be horrified by the latest revelations about the secret workings of the court that approves the president’s many requests for surveillance. Or at least you shouldn’t have to think that. But revelations by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in the last few days about the sweeping yet secret workings of the FISA court, appointed solely by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, have gotten far less attention than Snowden’s original revelations – and far less than they deserve. The man who just presided over a genteel gutting of the Voting Rights Act, who is laying the groundwork for doing away with affirmative action and who may have led his liberal colleagues to dramatically curtail the power of Congress to compel state action with his Obamacare ruling, has huge sway over our national security machinery. He has appointed all the sitting judges, and 10 of 11 are Republicans, with no confirmation or even oversight by Congress. Both of Roberts’ roles are hugely influential, and disturbing. A few weeks ago Reuters reported the sweep of Roberts’ influence: He appoints all FISA judges, drawn from the federal bench, and right now 10 of 12 were originally appointed by Republican presidents. Over the last 12 years, they approved 20,909 surveillance and property search warrants and rejected only 10 government requests. Between 2007 and 2012, they approved 532 “business record” warrants – like the one revealed by Snowden directing Verizon to hand over metadata on all U.S. calls. None of those requests were rejected, but the judges ordered “substantial modifications” to 428 of them. But secrecy dictates that we don’t know how they were modified. salon/2013/07/09/john_roberts_scary_secret_powers/
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 22:15:37 +0000
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