Explained: How the secret spy court really works
By Katie Bo Williams - 02/10/18 09:32 PM EST The allegations of surveillance abuse raised by House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) hinge on a 1978 law that governs surveillance for the purposes of foreign intelligence.
That surveillance must be conducted with a warrant when the collection takes place in the United States. Those warrants are granted by a secretive court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is known colloquially as “the FISC.â€
Nunes claims in a memo that the Department of Justice hoodwinked the FISC by failing to disclose that some of the information it used to apply for a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was drawn from opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The warrant application included a footnote saying that the provenance of the information was political opposition research, but did not specify Clinton or the DNC.
Here’s how the court works.
What does the FISC do? Each week, one of the 11 district court judges who make up the court is on duty in Washington to handle warrant applications from the Justice Department for both physical and electronic surveillance.
Most of its work is done “ex parte,†or behind closed doors, in order to protect classified national security information.
How does it approve warrants? It’s a multi-step process.
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http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/373217-explained-how-the-nations-secret-spy-court-really-works
