"There is a windowless room on the seventh floor of the US Department of Justice building in Washington. Few people know what happens within its walls. This is the home of America's most secretive court: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court (FISAC). We need to know about it because what it does or doesn't do has a great impact on the "war against terror" and American civil liberties.
Congress established FISAC in 1978 as a Cold War tool to conduct secret domestic investigations of alleged enemy agents. In those days it had little to do, but today it is one of the principal centers for the government's counter-terrorist efforts. It is where the Justice Department requests "warrantless warrants," authorizing the FBI to conduct secret domestic wiretaps and other snooping. Justice obtained 113 secret emergency search or electronic-surveillance authorizations from FISAC in the year after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, compared to 47 in the 23 years since the court's founding. "

Read on here