I'll have to make this quick, but I wanted everyone to have this information.
Since the FISA court was set up in 1979, they have received 33,949 requests for court orders.
They rejected 11.
11.
To put this into perspective, you were more likely to be absolved or reconciled by the Spanish Inquisition than you are to have your rights protected by a FISA court.
Since 1978, FISA has only told the federal government "No" 11 times. It is a rubber-stamp court that was set up originally to allow the federal government to go around the regular courts, in secret.
That may make sense when dealing with spies, but that court is now being used to target American citizens. It is being used to access our information, and conduct searches, without our knowledge.
The data was compiled from reports to congress by the Federation of American Scientists.
You can read those reports here.
It was compiled by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
You can view the compiled data here.
The vast Majority of requests to the FISA court have occurred since 9/11, about 60% of them.
Here's a chart showing the number of requests per year, the number accepted, and the number rejected, to give you an idea about how the FISA court is being used. Credit goes to EPIC for this.
I'm going to dig through those other documents provided by FAS myself, and I hope you will too.
I can't believe we've let it get this far. We've got to start pushing back, now.