US spy court rejected zero surveillance orders in 2015

The secretive US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court did not deny a single government request in 2015 for electronic surveillance orders granted for foreign intelligence purposes, continuing a longstanding trend, a Justice Department document showed. The court received 1,457 requests in 2015 on behalf of the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for authority to intercept communications, including e-mail and phone calls, according to a Justice Department memo sent to leaders of relevant congressional committees April 29. The court did not reject any of the applications in whole or in part, the memo showed.

The total represented a slight uptick from 2014, when the court received 1,379 applications and rejected none. The court modified 80 applications in 2015, a more than fourfold increase from the 19 modifications made in 2014. The memo also stated that 48,642 national security letter (NSL) requests were made in 2015 by the FBI.