Secret court argues again that it’s not a rubber stamp for surveillance

I find that letter even more disturbing than the alternative (where FISA is just rubber stamping applications).

In this case it means the court is working with agencies to build their surveillance policy. It is no longer an adversarial system, and the absences of any "defense" in this court means the court is now in a position where it is actively working to expand surveillance.

The most frustrating part about this to me is the certain knowledge that all of the informed parties are quite happily cherry-picking statistics to serve a political narrative and the majority of reporters and analysts are unable to do any sort of deep analysis of the source material because it's all classified.

The mere availability of source documents elevates the conversation from a juvenile process of people hurling meaningless statistics at each other. In the absence of actual data and redacted filings provided by the government, leaked documents such as provided by Manning and Snowden take on a new life. Instead of just statistics without context, there are documents that illuminate a court of law that's basically been a secret up to this point. Obviously those documents selectively serve a narrative, but ironicaly, they're made even more powerful by virtue of the fact that they're the first substantive look that much of the public has gotten at the FISC.

FISA Court's status as a rubber stamp is a straw man. The central issue is the secrecy, not the function within. With a secret court, no matter what the results (good or bad), no one knows the what/why/how except those operating within the court itself. They are, by definition, not objective evaluators of their performance. This is the issue.