The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act included among its provisions a court made up of seven U.S. district court judges, assigned by the Chief Justice of the United States, to review applications for warrants related to national security investigations. Applications for warrants, drafted by the General Counsel’s Office at the National Security Agency, were required to specify that the target of the surveillance was a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power, and if a U.S. citizen, was possibly involved in the commission of a crime. The court was created in response to a report of a Senate select committee (the Church Committee) which found that the executive branch had abused its authority to conduct domestic electronic surveillance for national security purposes.
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