The FISA court, and the Bureaucratic View

One place where we might still prefer the Traditional view of bureaucracy is the FISA court. These courts operate completely in secret, with only the intelligence community having any real access. This court oversees all federal wiretaps. The reasons that judges have enough slack such that, even in an era where voters (and therefore congressmen) are wary of surveillance, are several. First of all, already sitting federal judges are appointed to the court to serve short terms that are non-renewable, so the judge will never have to justify past action to their subcommittees, and have no incentive to reform (they'll never be up for this job again). Second of all, the cases are not public, so oversight is virtually impossible. The only way to measure the court's output is in the number of wiretaps granted, but since organizations can withdraw beforehand, and modify their requests to be more legal, judges can reasonably argue that the wiretaps were acceptable, and we have no reason not to accept what they say. A good avenue for reform would be the appointment of specific judges to serve just on this court, who can have their terms renewed. With this, there would be incentives for justices to act with more transparency.