FISA Court: "No, We Are Not a Star-Chamber Rubber-Stamp Court"

That's what the chief judge says.

The facts would seem to be different. The FISA court is the only Federal court I know of which is not adversarial. In a regular court, the issuance of a search warrant may be heavily scrutinized when the defendant's lawyer challenges it and the evidence gleaned as a result.

Not so with FISA. It apparently rarely turns down a request for a warrant. "Rarely" as in "about as often as a Chicago alderman turns down cash".

In 2012, the government requested its imprimatur for surveillance 1,856 times, an increase of 5% over its 2011 petitions. The court approved every request in both years.

There is evidently no proof of any real due process, just an illusion of it.

The other point, which needs to be hammered a little, is that it is very interesting how this story didn't break in an American newspaper. It took the Brits to do it.