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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (12800)	2/20/2006 1:46:02 PM
From: wonk	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541430

“…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. ww

To: carranza2 who wrote (12800)	2/20/2006 3:11:53 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 541430

Perhaps I missed it, but the chart you linked does not indicate how long it took to process a request; it simply lists those that were processed over the years. Perhaps we are talking past one another. I understood the basic problem the Bush folk had with the FISA process was the problems they, internally had, working up the documents and second that FISA would turn them down. I conflated those into "efficiency." I gather you meant "efficiency" as in the time spent on cases. If that's the case, then I agree that it's difficult if impossible to know. But one of the basic public cases the Bush administration made against FISA was the problem of approval, then that case just doesn't hold water. Obviously, a much stronger case could be made that the FISA courts are not doing their business well. They appear, given those statistics, as simply rubber stamp moments in the process. Which raises once again the question of why the Bush folk would go around them.