a little old, but relevant...

"There's been a fundamental change in the way the government conducts surveillance," said David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "And the result is a lot more secrecy and lot less accountability."
Federal agents sought 1,727 warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for electronic eavesdropping and physical searches last year, according to a Justice Department filing with Congress. Just four applications were rejected, although two of them were later revised and approved. The number of so-called FISA warrants jumped by 500 from 2002 and has almost doubled since 2001 when 934 applications were approved.
By comparison, there were 1,442 wiretap petitions in federal and state courts for crimes like drugs and racketeering, according to a separate report from the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said the new FISA figures show the Justice Department "is deploying its legal resources to uncover and prevent terrorist attacks on Americans."
"To keep the United States and its people safe, it is critical that the Department of Justice use every legal means to detect, deter and disrupt foreign terrorists and their activities here in America," Ashcroft said.
But critics of the government's surveillance efforts called the sharp increase worrisome because the work of the FISA court is conducted in secret and allows a lower standard of proof. It's generally tougher for a prosecutor to get permission for traditional wiretaps because they must demonstrate that there is probable cause that a suspect engaged in a crime. There's no such requirement when agents are seeking to gather intelligence from a suspected spy or terrorist. ...



^^for the rest of the article : http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0502-04.htm


-Adrienne