This secret court denied exactly 0 spying requests from the feds in 2015

Fodder for surveillance opponents.
(Image credit: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

Every time the federal government wanted to conduct surveillance for "foreign intelligence purposes" in 2015, it got permission to do exactly what it pleased.

A Justice Department memo reported by Reuters indicates that the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court (FSIC) — which is tasked with reviewing federal requests for electronic spying, physical searches, and other forms of surveillance against foreign suspects — rubber-stamped every spying request it received last year. All 1,457 petitions were approved, and only 80 of them were modified at all.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.