And as much as agency officials would later cite the NSA’s oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which by law had to approve any surveillance operation that might target Americans, the court had become something of a rubber stamp. The NSA’s arguments were heard without any opposing counsel, and when the court—under public pressure from the Snowden revelations—finally released numbers, it showed that of the 1,789 applications it received to surveil Americans in 2012, it approved 1,748 without any changes. Only one case had to be withdrawn.
