The New York Times has a fairly shocking story about how the FISA Court has built up a body of secret law that has enabled the NSA and other intelligence agencies to gather massive amounts of data on citizens. The question raised by this revelation is simple: Can the Supreme Court review these decisons? And if not, does this make the FISA Court the last word on our privacy rights? In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation's surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say. The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and...(Read Full Post)