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Obama Announces Surveillance Reforms
In a speech today, U.S. President Barack Obama announced changes for the operations of the country's intelligence agencies. He says the current program will end "as it currently exists," though most of the data collection schemes will remain intact. However, the data collected in these sweeps will not be stored by the U.S. government, instead residing with either the communications providers or another third party. (He pointed out that storing private data within a commercial entity can have its own oversight issues, so the attorney general and intelligence officials will have to figure out the best compromise.) In order for the NSA to query the database, they will need specific approval from a national security court. Obama also announced "new oversight" to spying on foreign leaders, and an end to spying on leaders of friendly and allied countries. Further, decisions from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court will be annually reviewed for declassification. A panel advocating for citizen privacy will have input into the FISC. There will be chances to national security letters: they will no longer have an indefinite secrecy period. Companies will be able to disclose some amount of information about the NSLs they receive, something they've been asking for. Another change is a reduction in the number of steps from suspected terrorists that phone data can be gathered. Instead of grabbing all the data from people three steps away, it's now limited to two.
The FISA court has been a whitewash since the Church Committee days. FISA rejects about one warrant per 3 year period (or 1 in 3000): .... You can't rationally call rubber stamping like that "oversight."
I suppose it is out of the question to even pretend that both the Justice Department attorneys and judges approach the job seriously and professionally since going to court is always done on a lark, no preparation needed.
The judges who preside over America's secret court
In rare public remarks 10 years ago, a former presiding FISA judge, Royce Lamberth, described the process: "I ask questions. I get into the nitty-gritty. I know exactly what is going to be done and why. And my questions are answered, in every case, before I approve an application."
Syracuse University College of Law professor William C. Banks, who follows the FISA court closely, said he suspects that warrants are "modified" when judges request more information about a warrant or decide to split a warrant with multiple suspects, phone numbers and locations into several, more specific ones.
"We can't tell the extent of modification, but clearly it suggests that the judges are taking a real look at these things and are at least modifying them in some respect," said Penn Law professor Theodore Ruger.
NSA Data Mining Is Legal, Necessary, Sec. Chertoff Says
FISA warrant applications are inches thick, he said, and "if you're trying to sift through an enormous amount of data very quickly, I think it would be impractical." He said that getting an ordinary FISA warrant is "a voluminous, time-consuming process" .
The judges who preside over America's secret court
Between 2001 and 2012, the FISA judges approved 20,909 surveillance and property search warrants - an average of 33 a week. During that 12-year period, the judges denied just 10 applications. Prosecutors withdrew another 26 applications.
From 2007 to 2012, FISA judges also approved 532 "business record" warrant applications, the category used in the order that directed Verizon to release metadata on all phone calls inside the United States. No business record warrants were rejected.
The records also show that FISA judges ordered "substantial modifications" to 497 surveillance and property warrants and 428 of the business record warrants.
The statistics are especially intriguing for business record warrants for 2011 and 2012. Of 417 warrants authorized, the court "substantially modified" 376
It would be easy to get the impression that few people posting here have any concept of what true professionalism means.
Are you happier now?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell