One of the big complaints in the past, is that the FISA Court is no court at all. Only one side — the government — gets to present its case, and then the judges decide.

The USA Freedom Act, however, added the ability of the FISC to appoint a public advocate. Many have been quite reasonably skeptical about this — in terms of how often it would be used, who would be appointed and how seriously the FISC would take the public advocate. In this case, we see that the public advocate did, in fact, argue that parts of the PRISM program were unconstitutional… and the FISC then rejected that.