Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court spoke yesterday at the ABA's National Security Law gathering. (On C-SPAN). Points of interest: Why the court is not involved in domestic surveillance with the rise of terrorism and militancy in the US: It was considered during the implementation of the recent Anti-Terrorism Act but a decision was made to leave that task to District Courts. Why the court has denied only a dozen out of 8,000 requests for surveillance: All are excellently prepared and the judges advise on the few applications that are not to make them approvable. He went on to say that numbers do not tell the real story, that there are a variety of ways orders are issued and continued to keep an investigation viable and as it evolves. He cited the differences in renewals between orders covering individuals and those covering organizations: the first must be renewed every 90 days, the latter every year. Moreover, there may be changes during an investigation, say, by targeting an individual within an org, with difference regs, or combining individuals into a group, with also different regs. So the numbers of orders do not actually reflect how things work. However, the Court makes and annual report to Congress. Judge Lamberth joked that he hoped the Court's decisions were "constitutional," and after the laughter, apologized and said he should not have said that. He said that positions on the court are avidly sought, that the work was the most "fun" he had ever had, that it was very exciting to be part of the select group that deals with the highest secrets of the land. He commented on how "Article 3" provisions to protect national security and related secrets conflict with the FOIA, by saying first things first. ----- A related note on Greg's fruitless FOIA requests to various agencies about cpunks: active investigations are protected from FOIA requests, indeed, it is not uncommon to keep an investigation "active" to keep the secrets, to redefine the targets, to redefine as the Courts helpfully advise. Be sure to laugh at the constitutional joke, it's fun to be an insider playing with vital national life and death decisions and amusing the audience on TV.