Lucky Green asked about judges of the FISA court, and Declan named Joyce Green. The Chief Judge of FISA is Royce Lambert, who gave talk on C-SPAN about the operation of the court at an ABA conference in D.C. a few months ago. He made the point that few applications for electronic surveillance are turned down by the court (of 8,000 applications 12 were denied) because the judges coach the applicants until they get a request right. And that the DoJ teams are quite adept at complying with the court's requirements, because all pass muster first of a special office set up for that purpose. Judge Lambert said the job is "a lot of fun" because its deals with supremely critical events of national urgency, and that all the judges involved really do like it, especially the secrecy and prestige of being part of one of the most exclusive groups in Washington. This is not a joke. Indeed, the Chief joked that the court's role "may be constitutional." And then said that he'll probably get in trouble for the statement. For how the snoop system is supposed to work see the Foreign Intelligence Suveillance Act: http://jya.com/fis.htm (107K)