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The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a federal court of nationwide jurisdiction that was created by statute in 1978. Its function and purpose is to review applications for "warrants' for domestic surveillance of persons suspected of having connections with foreign governments and/or terrorist organizations. The court is highly unusual in that its location is secret, its proceedings are ex parte, and virtually all of its orders and opinions are classified, and may not be published or otherwise disclosed. The government justifies this secrecy on the basis of national security. Nevertheless, certain limited information about the court is available on government websites, including information that is designed to inform the public about the court and its functions. This chapter examines the content of these websites in which the government depicts an otherwise invisible court. I argue that the information provided on these government websites constructs the court as legitimate by minimizing or omitting problematic aspects of the court's operation, while framing it as a duly constituted Article III court. Through this publicly available information posted on its websites, the government thus advances a particular vision of a court whose operations and decisions remain invisible.

DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-9322-6_31

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