Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. Office of Sen. Rockefeller
Senate Majority Whip: FISA Court Is 'Fixed' and 'Loaded'
Dick Durbin wants to add a civil-liberties advocate to the court's proceedings and to limit the NSA's data collection.
The Obama Administration says the FISA court adequately safeguards Americans' civil liberties. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who holds the second-highest Democratic leadership position in the Senate, disagrees.
"These FISA courts -- there should be a real court proceeding," he said on Sunday. "In this case, it's fixed in a way. It's loaded. There's only one case coming before the FISA court: the government's case. Let's have an advocate, or someone, standing up for civil liberties, to speak up for the privacy of Americans when they make each of these decisions, and let's release some of the transcripts, redacted, carefully redacted, so that people understand the debate that's going on in these FISA courts." When you've got a senior lawmaker calling a secret court "fixed in a way," implying that it doesn't conduct "real" proceedings, and affirming that its judges aren't hearing information that would be relevant to their decisions, that's alarming.