As Kyle Peterson of the Wall Street Journal recently described on Fox News what he called the "Irreparably broken" process, whose genesis was a bill written by Sen. Ted Kennedy, "I mean, you have the government going to this court and saying we would like to surveil this person there's not an adversarial process; there's nobody standing up for his rights in front of the court. The judge signs off on it - no accountability whatsoever."
Last month, the FISA Court issued a rare public statement, scolding the FBI for bamboozling it with errors and omissions in seeking to spy on Trump campaign consultant Carter Page.
Last Thursday, a FISA Court order was declassified that found that two of the FBI's surveillance application renewals were "Not valid" because of the Bureau's "Material misstatements and omission" rendering them "Insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power." A high-ranking FBI national security attorney was actually found to have tampered with an email for one of the applications to make it seem Page had not been utilized by the CIA as a source.
There is so much trust in the FBI, National Security Agency, and other federal agencies with the ability to surveil - perhaps warranted until recent years - that the FISA Court has amounted to a veritable warrant factory.
The effective appeals court available after a denial of a warrant is the three-judge Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.
There may as well be no FISA Court at all considering its rubber stamping of most everything that comes before it; like the old saw that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, this hidden panel of unknown judges trustingly gives government permission to spy on any animal, vegetable or mineral it suspects.
If the FISA Court isn't acting as a real court, it would be better to discontinue the charade and let the executive branch be its own official judge - with Congress looking over its shoulder.
https://issuesinsights.com/2020/01/30/do-we-even-need-a-fisa-court/
Last month, the FISA Court issued a rare public statement, scolding the FBI for bamboozling it with errors and omissions in seeking to spy on Trump campaign consultant Carter Page.
Last Thursday, a FISA Court order was declassified that found that two of the FBI's surveillance application renewals were "Not valid" because of the Bureau's "Material misstatements and omission" rendering them "Insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power." A high-ranking FBI national security attorney was actually found to have tampered with an email for one of the applications to make it seem Page had not been utilized by the CIA as a source.
There is so much trust in the FBI, National Security Agency, and other federal agencies with the ability to surveil - perhaps warranted until recent years - that the FISA Court has amounted to a veritable warrant factory.
The effective appeals court available after a denial of a warrant is the three-judge Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.
There may as well be no FISA Court at all considering its rubber stamping of most everything that comes before it; like the old saw that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, this hidden panel of unknown judges trustingly gives government permission to spy on any animal, vegetable or mineral it suspects.
If the FISA Court isn't acting as a real court, it would be better to discontinue the charade and let the executive branch be its own official judge - with Congress looking over its shoulder.
https://issuesinsights.com/2020/01/30/do-we-even-need-a-fisa-court/
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