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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
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:08PM (3 children)
Usually the a good defense attorney would check this and bring it to the judge's attention.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Thursday December 19 2019, @02:16AM (2 children)
FISA court. SECRET COURT. This is about the appearance of due process, not due process. Is there a defense attorney even involved?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 19 2019, @06:44AM (1 child)
No, I don't believe there is any defense. All you have are accusers, and the judge(s) who are expected to rubber stamp everything the accusers claim, and everything they want. As you point out, it's secret, secret, secret.
Which puts a burden on the judge to question everything. If the judge is not up to the burden, he shouldn't be doing the job. And, I'm not sure that any judge is up to the task of watch dogging everyone who comes into his court, asking for whatever.
WHich is just another circular logic route bringing us back to - THERE SHOULDN'T BE ANY SECRET COURTS!!! The whole thing is a farce. Just dump all of that back onto the federal court system, where it belongs.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday December 19 2019, @10:14PM
You expect a lot from the FISA judges -- hasn't it been something like a mid-double digit number of warrant rejections out of a pool of tens of thousands? Yep, well close: 12 rejected out 38169 applications between 1979 and 2015: https://dailycaller.com/2017/03/06/fisa-surveillance-requests-are-almost-never-rejected/ [dailycaller.com] (or if you want a lefty source: 11/33900 (but the article is from 2013): https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2013/06/fisa-court-nsa-spying-opinion-reject-request/ [motherjones.com] )
Let's be honest, rubber stamps actually fail more often that the FISA court fails to approve warrants.