Judge estimates 30k secret spying warrants issued per year

[KBCraig]

It's nice that they used the "Electronic Communications Privacy Act" to authorize spying.


http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/06/judge-estimates-30k-secret-spying-orders-approved-each-year/1#.T86Yn7jDVoY

Federal judges approve about 30,000 secret warrants to spy on people in the USA every year, and the innocent probably will never know they were watched, says a U.S. jurist involved in issuing the orders.

Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith writes in a new paper, highlighted by Ars Technica, that the 2006 total outstripped the entire output of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court since it was created in 1979, and the number is probably growing.

The secret orders are authorized by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, known as ECPA. Smith writes that the volume of such cases "is greater than the combined yearly total of all antitrust, employment discrimination, environmental, copyright, patent, trademark and securities cases filed in federal court."

The warrants and the court's proceedings are not open to public scrutiny. A three-judge panel reviews denials of applications for the warrants, but the court is not adversarial or open, and many orders are never unsealed.