Carter Page may have been the surveillance target named in the FISA warrant, but he was of low rank in the alleged conspiracy.
McCarthy's point here means that the surveillance authorized by the FISA warrant wasn't limited to the personal communications of Carter Page; it only began there.
This convention is referred to as the "Two-hop" rule, and, like many provisions of surveillance law, has come in for criticism by civil libertarians.
Information technology enabled surveillance operators under the Patriot Act, which complemented and in some ways overlapped FISA surveillance, to inaugurate a "Three-hop" rule exploiting computer-networked communications to look well beyond the first-order contacts of a central subject.
In 2008, with the FISA Amendments Act, Congress effectively authorized the three-hop rule used under the Patriot Act-although that point was understood by the public only in hindsight, following the revelations about surveillance practices made by National Security Agency contract worker Edward Snowden.
To understand the extent of what the FBI was empowered to do by the FISA warrant for Carter Page, we must add another factor: the type of surveillance available for exploitation, and the breadth of data involved in it.
The possible abuse of that warrant for partisan political purposes would likely be a violation not just of Page's rights, but of the rights of thousands of other Americans-and by extension, of the right of all Americans to be free from warrantless surveillance.
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/256333/fisas-license-to-hop
McCarthy's point here means that the surveillance authorized by the FISA warrant wasn't limited to the personal communications of Carter Page; it only began there.
This convention is referred to as the "Two-hop" rule, and, like many provisions of surveillance law, has come in for criticism by civil libertarians.
Information technology enabled surveillance operators under the Patriot Act, which complemented and in some ways overlapped FISA surveillance, to inaugurate a "Three-hop" rule exploiting computer-networked communications to look well beyond the first-order contacts of a central subject.
In 2008, with the FISA Amendments Act, Congress effectively authorized the three-hop rule used under the Patriot Act-although that point was understood by the public only in hindsight, following the revelations about surveillance practices made by National Security Agency contract worker Edward Snowden.
To understand the extent of what the FBI was empowered to do by the FISA warrant for Carter Page, we must add another factor: the type of surveillance available for exploitation, and the breadth of data involved in it.
The possible abuse of that warrant for partisan political purposes would likely be a violation not just of Page's rights, but of the rights of thousands of other Americans-and by extension, of the right of all Americans to be free from warrantless surveillance.
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/256333/fisas-license-to-hop
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