“…The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was created by section 103(a) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1803(a)). It was originally comprised of seven district judges from seven circuits named by the Chief Justice of the United States to serve a maximum of 7 years.
In 2001, the U.S.A. Patriot Act (section 208) amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to increase the number of FIS Court judges from seven to eleven, "of whom no fewer than 3 shall reside within 20 miles of the District of Columbia." The membership of the Court in 2005 was as follows….”
fas.org
So for 7 judges through 2001 and 11 thereafter….
Apps Apps Per Judge Per Judge
Apps Per Day Biz Day Per Day Biz Day
2000 1,005 2.8 3.9 0.4 0.6
2001 932 2.6 3.6 0.4 0.5
2002 1,228 3.4 4.7 0.3 0.4
2003 1,727 4.7 6.6 0.4 0.6
2004 1,758 4.8 6.7 0.4 0.6
Absent other data, it seems that that process is efficient given the fact that all the Judges have other duties, and they have to review those ‘2-3 inch’ applications (ahem, cough, cough) which take ‘months to prepare.’ Yet, a reasonable argument could be made that the Court lacks the resources to diligently examine those ‘2-3’ applications.
Even these inferred statistics (as you correctly noted) cannot indicate how long an application was pending before processed. However, given the processing rate, which is quite good, if there are delays the only way to eliminate the backlog is either simplify the process (which entails potential abuse) or to allocate more “just in time” resources - see Queuing Theory. Advocating the former is like eliminating airbags to save weight to get better gas mileage.
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