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Secret FISA Court Issues Highly Unusual Public Rebuke of FBI for Mistakes

posted by martyb on Wednesday December 18 2019, @09:03AM   
from the follow-the-rules dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/secret-fisa-court-issues-highly-unusual-rebuke-fbi-mistakes-n1103451

The secret federal court that approves orders for conducting surveillance on suspected foreign terrorists or spies issued a strong and highly unusual public rebuke to the FBI on Tuesday, ordering the agency to say how it intends to correct the errors revealed last week by a Justice Department report on one aspect of the FBI's investigation of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said the FBI made serious and repeated mistakes in seeking under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to conduct surveillance of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.

The FBI's submission to the court made assertions that were "inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation," the report said.

Rosemary Collyer, presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, said in the unusual public order that the report "calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable." She ordered the FBI to explain in writing by Jan. 10 how it intends to remedy those problems.

Document here: https://www.scribd.com/document/440156909/Fisa-Court-to-FBI

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Original Submission

• Re:Rotting_Suet_Bait_Ball (Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday December 18 2019, @09:52PM

  by khallow (3766) on Wednesday December 18 2019, @09:52PM (#933935) Journal

  Also note that they investigated FOUR separate warrant applications and found errors only on ONE of them. So, 75% were fine.

  Only if you ignore a bunch of stuff:

  In the filing the Justice Department finally revealed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held no hearings on the Page FISA spy warrants, first issued in 2016 and subsequently renewed three times:

  [National Security Division] FOIA consulted [Office of Intelligence] … to identify and locate records responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] FOIA request…. [Office of Intelligence] determined … that there were no records, electronic or paper, responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] FOIA request with regard to Carter Page. [Office of Intelligence] further confirmed that the [Foreign Surveillance Court] considered the Page warrant applications based upon written submissions and did not hold any hearings.

  The Department of Justice previously released to Judicial Watch the heavily redacted Page warrant applications. The initial Page FISA warrant was granted just weeks before the 2016 election.

  So t was a single erroneous warrent renewed three times. Hence, the initial errors apply to all.

  Parent

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