Silence in court

摘要

Since leaked documents revealed in June that America's National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting information about phone calls made by millions of Americans, citizens and journalists have clamoured to know more. They want to know especially about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, which since 1978 has approved or declined the agency's snooping operations by weighing them against the law. On July 6th the New York Times reported that as well as ruling on specific operations the court has been handing down classified decisions on general surveillance issues, many of them favourable to the spies. These rulings constitute a secret body of law, anonymous sources told the Times: rather than holding spies to account, the FISA court is starting to resemble a parallel Supreme Court.